1:01:18Absolute Motivation · Essay
TIME TO GET IT TOGETHER ONCE AND FOR ALL
Nine chapters, dozens of voices, one relentless argument: the person you need to become will cost you the person you are.
June 16thThe argument in one line.
Motivation is unreliable and temporary -- the only mechanism that actually closes the gap between intention and outcome is the disciplined habit of keeping promises to yourself even when you feel nothing.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have made the same resolution multiple times and broken it -- you recognize the pattern but have not cracked the mechanism.
- You want a long-form audio-visual immersion in mindset content rather than a how-to framework.
- You are studying how motivational compilation channels structure 100-minute sessions for maximum emotional impact.
- You do well with repetition -- hearing the same core idea from a dozen different voices until it lands.
SKIP IF…
- You need a specific numbered system or action plan -- this video is principle-dense but step-light.
- Speaker attribution matters to you; voices are not identified on screen.
- You have already internalized the discipline-over-motivation argument and want new territory.
The full version, fast.
The video runs 103 minutes and features no single host -- instead, a rotating cast of recognizable motivational voices build a cumulative case over five loose phases: urgency, commitment mechanics, fear and action, suffering reframed, and identity-level change. The binding argument is that motivation is a lagging indicator, not a prerequisite -- action comes first, belief follows. Every speaker returns to the same demand: do what you said you were going to do, on the days you least want to, and your life will change as a consequence.
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00:00 – 15:00
01 · Urgency and the eight-year-old
Eric Thomas opens. The 8-year-old self had no filters. Adults suppress creative energy with the opinions of others. You have one spin on this planet. Act now or spend tomorrow repairing yesterday.
15:00 – 35:00
02 · Commitment mechanics
Keeping promises to yourself is the engine of self-worth. Work comes before belief. Confidence accumulates as a side effect of doing the work. Discipline is rooted in truth. Structure your morning.
35:00 – 55:00
03 · Fear, action, and the hesitation trap
Motivation is garbage. Hesitation sends a stress signal that activates the brain protection sequence. You are never going to feel like doing hard things. One decision separates you from a different life.
55:00 – 1:15:00
04 · Suffering as preparation
Pain is the callus-builder, not the enemy. Failure gives two choices: stay down or get up. The ego runs from suffering because it dissolves the ego. Get past the threshold.
1:15:00 – 1:43:10
05 · Identity, imagination, and vision
Enhance your capabilities, not your idea of success. Orient upward or work at counter-premises. Imagination is the power to see the world that could exist. Who you become is the point.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Motivation is a lagging indicator, not a prerequisite -- belief in yourself builds after you take action, not before.
- The reason you are not changing is because the cost of staying the same has not yet exceeded the cost of change.
- Not following through on small promises to yourself destroys confidence more reliably than any external failure can.
- Hesitation is not harmless -- the moment you hesitate, your brain launches a protection sequence that makes action harder.
- Discipline is rooted in the truth you tell yourself; lie about where you are, and discipline has no address to show up at.
- You are not here to be happy -- you are here to experience the full spectrum, and chasing only the pleasant half makes you smaller.
- If you do not know where you want to be in five years, you are already there.
- Suffering is preparation for personal heroism -- the ego runs from it precisely because it dissolves the ego.
- Work comes before belief. Do the work regardless of what it produces today, and belief accumulates as a side effect.
- Greatness is not for a chosen few; it is for those who make the choice to pursue it every morning.
- Your gift does not guarantee success -- it guarantees an opportunity. What you do with that opportunity is the whole story.
- The tallest trees grow in the deepest silence -- ambition requires the capacity to tune out the crowd.
- When you die, you will be dead for a very long time. The math alone should make you squeeze harder.
- Antifragility is the single most important trait you can build: when feedback cannot hurt you, every interaction makes you better.
- The starting line is the most beautiful place to be -- it is the only moment when every possibility is still open.
Keeping your word to yourself is the whole game.
WHAT TO LEARN
Every speaker on this compilation returns to the same demand -- act before you feel ready, because readiness is constructed by action, not a prerequisite for it.
- Confidence and momentum are not personality traits or gifts; they are outputs of consistent action and can be generated deliberately by anyone.
- The gap between who you are and who you want to be exists because the pain of staying the same has not yet exceeded the pain of changing -- that threshold is the actual variable to watch.
- Hesitation is not neutral; every moment you stall, your brain actively builds a case against acting and makes the next step harder.
- Work precedes belief: acting without confidence first is not recklessness, it is the mechanism through which belief is built.
- Discipline does not need to be summoned -- it arrives automatically when you become honest about the distance between your current self and your stated values.
- Suffering is not a sign you are doing it wrong; it is the raw material from which resilience is constructed, and avoiding it only delays the cost.
- Identity change is the deepest lever: if you shift what you believe about who you are, behavior follows without willpower.
- Making your self-esteem antifragile -- separating it from being wrong -- converts every piece of critical feedback into acceleration rather than threat.
- The starting line is the most useful place to be, not a sign of failure; every door of possibility is still open from there.
- Urgency is not anxiety -- it is the accurate perception that time is finite and the math of a life well-lived demands you stop treating tomorrow as a refund.
Terms worth knowing.
- Antifragile
- A property of systems that gain strength from stress and disorder rather than merely tolerating it. Applied to identity, it means separating your self-esteem from being wrong so that criticism accelerates your growth instead of threatening your sense of self.
- Spotlight effect
- A cognitive bias where the brain magnifies the perceived risk of social exposure, causing people to overestimate how much others notice or judge their actions, and use that exaggeration as a reason not to act.
- The bad foot
- A metaphor for leading with action from a position of low motivation or discomfort. Successful people step forward with the bad foot -- the one that does not feel ready -- rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
06:22
“The reason you are not changing is because the cost of remaining the same is not yet higher than the cost of change.”
03:30
“Confidence, momentum -- these are not magical. They are not gifts from the universe. These are things that are within our control.”
12:52
“Discipline is rooted in the truth we tell ourselves. If you believe you can do more, you will not have to find discipline -- discipline will find you.”
1:13:48
“Not willing to sacrifice for your goals? That is okay. Just know your goals will become the sacrifice.”
37:01
“Motivation is garbage. You only feel motivated to do the things that are easy.”
1:32:36
“If you do not know where you want to be in five years, you are already there.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogy
To do anything successfully in life, you've gotta want it as bad as you want to breathe. You have to explore,
examine the insides of yourself. And what do you really want out of life?
The eight year old version of you would do the thing that you're afraid to do. The eight year old version of you would create the thing that you want to create, but you're too scared to because you worried about what other people will think. And that creative energy is inside of all of us.
Because all of us were once that eight year old kid with a piece of paper in front of us just making the things we wanted to make. And today, we have all these filters that suppress that creative energy. The opinions of other people, whether or not it's going to work, and then we don't end up making anything.
We never start that business. We never make that music. We never put out that content because as adults, we worry about just about everything except for what we want to do, what we like to do.
You only get . If you wanna fucking make something, make it. If you wanna say something, say it.
If you wanna do something, do it because the only person you have to answer to at the end of your life is you.
Every moment matters.
So today, you got it in your hand. Grab it. Do it right now.
If you do it now, you're preparing for tomorrow. If you don't do it now, tomorrow, you're gonna try to repair yesterday, and you just can't do that well.
Every moment matters.
And if you fall, and you're probably gonna fall, you just get back up. Alright?
Once you get up from laying in the gutter, whatever your gutter is, for months and weeks and years at a time, when you get up, that doesn't mean you're never gonna fall back down again.
What it means is you got up the one time, it means you get up the next time, and the next time, and the next time.
See, you can do anything. You can get up any hour, read any book, take any class, make any change, develop any skill, do any discipline. I mean, you could do it all when this how and the why or when the why starts to grow.
The how gets simple.
The key is not to wish for a better winter. Key is to wish for more strength, more wisdom, more courage, get better, get wiser, get strolled.
We have to constantly ask ourselves the uncomfortable questions.
I mean, is the world better for me having been in it?
Keep the promises you make to yourself. Don't be a I'll do it when I'm ready kind of person because you know what?
You'll never be ready. When you do what you say you're gonna do, hard things become easier.
Not following through destroys your confidence and your self worth.
Take it one decision at a time, start small, stack some wins, and keep going.
Work comes before the belief. You have to say, I'm gonna do the work regardless of what it produces.
I'm just gonna do the work. I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna do the work today, and if it doesn't produce anything today, I'm gonna get up.
I'm gonna do it again tomorrow. And what happens is over the course of time, you start to believe because you're seeing a little bit of result. You're seeing a little bit of win.
You're seeing a little bit of progress happening, and you're starting to realize, oh, shit. This is how the it works. Confidence, momentum, these are things we are in control of.
These are not magical. They are not gifts from the universe. These are things that are within our control.
Now, know taking chances is is kind of fretful, but the best things in life is on the other side of fear. As I make my dreams bigger than all my fears.
I have dreams that's so big that not not getting there is just unacceptable. It it doesn't make any sense for you not to have the life that you dream of.
There is no tomorrow for that shit. Let's get all this done today. A lot of people think they have all this time, so they waste it.
And they never go out and do what they really set out to do or accomplish or do anything great in their life. You think when you're young that you have all this time, you have no time.
There's no time.
You have to serve someone. What are you gonna do today that you tomorrow will appreciate?
It doesn't matter who you used to be. What matters is who you decide to be today.
You're not defined by your mistakes, your mishaps, or your past.
Every day is a new opportunity to get it right. Don't take it for granted. Put the excuses to the side and take inventory of everything you want in this life.
It's time you start investing in the person that matters the most and that person is you.
You wanna change the trajectory of your life? You wanna change the trajectory of your success? You wanna change the trajectory of your relationship?
Don't lead with the good foot, step with that bad foot because that's where growth and change is. It's easy to do things when you're feeling good. It's easy to do things when you're excited.
The most successful people you've ever met, they've had to constantly lead with that bad foot. That constantly take that .
They're still stepping with that bad foot.
Nourish your values like a mother and fight your enemies like a father, even if you have to fight the enemies that are within yourself.
Don't become a victim of yourself. It's possible to become a victim of tragedy, possible to become a victim of gossip, possible to become a victim of the things that happen out there, but here's the most important thing, don't become a victim of yourself.
You wanna change your behavior, you wanna change your life and it just feels really hard, you and feel like you're in a place where you're stuck. I want you to remember that the reason that you are not changing is because the cost of remaining the same is not yet higher than the cost of change.
You will run into hard times as you are living out your destiny. If you don't want problems, don't do anything important in life.
If you don't want problems, be like everybody else. If you don't want problems, be average, mediocre, living a life well beneath your potential, complaining about everything, blaming other people, be just like everybody else if you don't want problems.
But if you wanna make a difference, if you want to pursue your vision, if you want to live out your maximum potential, there will be problems.
And if you want it bad enough, you will get through those problems.
It's all internal. Right? If you finish a marathon in first place, no one comes along and drips dopamine in your ear, you self generate that.
Now that doesn't mean that there aren't good and bad events in life. The fact of the matter is that if you set the next milestone as just outside the distance of what you're comfortable with and you make it there, if you allow yourself a moment to register that win, you get energy to then set the next milestone and achieve it.
You're not here to be happy.
You're here to live life. You're here to experience suffering. You're here to experience tribulation.
You're here to experience heartbreak, pain, joy, pleasure, every single avenue, every single emotion, why would you limit yourself from experiencing that?
Why? Because you're scared? You're afraid.
You don't know how it's gonna work out. It doesn't feel good. Perfectly fine.
But I've come to understand, I've come to realize that the beauty of life isn't in pursuing happiness, it's in pursuing experiences.
Going out of your comfort zone and overcoming the butterflies that are gonna be in your stomach and a little mini panic attacks that you're gonna have, go do those things and do them as often as you possibly can and you will get used to all these little feelings that arise when some pressure situation unfolds.
Just eliminate all external distractions and you know, just focus on the process itself and enjoying it every single day, chopping oil, carrying water. You know, greatness is not meant for a few chosen people. It's it's meant for those who persistently pursue their dreams every day and make that choice when they wake up.
So just a mentality really.
Somebody who does not have enough courage, who does not have enough discipline, who does not have willpower, maybe he just does not have the power anymore to keep on going and going and going after he failed so many times.
But because of these failures, because there is something inside of you which which feels that you don't want to fail the fourth and fifth and sixth time anymore.
Because of this, something else inside of you starts to become very very strong. And once again, and then you only need to keep repeating and going.
Repeating and going. Don't lose sight.
Don't lose sight.
It's the starting line and what a beautiful place to be. Where else would you wanna be to be standing at the edge of a new life?
The edge of a new opportunity. The edge of a new path that you can walk. And I know that you might look up and see the mountain before you, the heights that you can't even see the tops of, but there's no place you'd rather be.
Because right now, right now in this place is the beginning of something beautiful.
The opportunity to create like you've never created. The opportunity to let go of everything. All of that baggage that's kept you down in the past, you can let it go starting now.
In our journey of life, if we are doing it correctly, we will have dreams and aspirations, goals and objectives, desires for success, and the ability to position ourselves to help others.
Our success in achieving any of these things will be based largely on our ability to endure along the way. Endurance is the foundation upon which greatness is built and is a beacon of strength and resilience.
Sometimes when your body just hurts, your legs hurt or sore, but that's how you get better. The only way that you can get better is by pushing yourself beyond what you believe you're capable of of doing.
Nothing you want is gonna happen in your time. It almost never does. So everything you ask God for, it comes in a process.
It's going to happen. It's the never giving up that hurts people the most. You pray for something, you ask God for something, then when it don't happen in your time, then you create these human excuses.
I just didn't happen in your timing, but I can almost assure you nothing you want is gonna happen in your timing. It almost never does.
This is it, man. Showtime. This is your moment.
You've been praying for an opportunity. Here it is. You're about to walk into that season of your life.
I just hope you're ready for it.
The odds of you being on this earth is one in four hundred trillion. So you were chosen to be here. The only difference between you and the person who is going after their purpose is the choice of being chosen.
Believing that they are chosen. Those who are great are those who choose to be chosen.
Discipline is rooted in the truth we tell ourselves. That that's what it is.
Discipline is rooted in the truth we tell ourselves. Because if you tell yourself the truth, if you tell yourself the truth and the truth is I'm not happy with where I'm at. That's the truth.
The truth is I can do more. The truth is I can do much better than I'm doing right now. And if that's the real truth, if that's what you believe, if you believe that to be the truth, you won't have to find more discipline, discipline will find you.
If you value your goals, you need structure. You need a routine that gives you the best possible chance at achieving them.
Whatever it is for you, find a way to start your day that makes you feel your best. There's a good chance you already know what that is and it's likely something hard that you'd rather put off.
You will always fall into a routine. You either create one or it will be handed to you. You choose.
You don't have the answers and it's probably pretty damn scary. And I say that's okay because that is how it is.
This is the reality that many of you are facing. This is the world that we live in.
In a world filled with noise, your voice, your actions, and your decisions have the power to carve out silence, a silence in which you can find your true self and your path to success.
It's easy to get lost in the crowd, to follow the well trodden path, but your journey, it's unique.
It's not defined by the cacophony of doubts and fears, but by your ability to rise above it.
Embrace the solitude of ambition. Let it be your guide in the chaos. Remember, the .
Feelings are like waves in the mind and you just wanna just be with them. You wanna be in the misery. You wanna be in the pain.
You wanna be in the emotional suffering. Just be there without any resistance as if you're letting waves just move through and watch it stay with it and they will dissolve like waves dissolving back into the ocean.
The feelings will dissolve into the mind.
Your gift will make room for you and in time that room will be large enough to stand in and then
the room will be filled with people
and then the people filled with your light and when they leave, they take that light with them. You see, your light, when confined to you only goes as far as you can travel.
But sharing your light with one other person, two other people, three other people, now that that might just change the world.
You're going right where you're destined to go, it's not supposed to feel good all the time. It's not supposed to be easy, you know.
So when you're going through seasons of discomfort, seasons of feeling overwhelmed, feeling pulled in a lot of different directions, understand that it's a part of you getting to the place that you wanna be.
You getting to the best version of yourself. It's all playing a role. And you know like that vision that you have for yourself.
You know, the the dreams and the aspirations you have for yourself like they're not easy to attain.
Like some people's expectations, their belief systems are life should be taken care of me. Uh, I gotta show people that life is calling to you.
You need to deliver something to life. Because as long as you're waiting for somebody to take care of you, then you're always the victim. You're always waiting.
Whereas, if you think that I'm here to deliver something to life, I have a responsibility in life to give something, not just get something. That's when people feel alive because what you get never makes you happy.
Don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you don't belong because you will always find it. Don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you're not enough because you'll always find it.
Our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people.
Persevere. Nothing worthwhile is easy.
No one of achievement has avoided failure, sometimes catastrophic failures.
They keep at it. They learn from mistakes. They they don't quit.
You were given a gift, but let me tell you right now, it comes at a cost. Your gift is not free. What's the cost?
You have to work for it. You have to work at it. You have to manifest it.
You have to grow it. You have to get better at it. You have to get better at sharing your gift.
You have to cultivate your gift so much that you can share it. Your God given gift doesn't guarantee that you will succeed.
It just guarantees you an opportunity. And let me tell you what an opportunity you have.
Your potential is like that tree, waiting to rise above the noise, to reach heights unseen.
This is your moment to tune out the distractions, to focus on what truly matters, Your growth, your journey, your impact, your success.
Rise above the noise and let your actions declare to the whole world your purpose.
And so what's the point of climbing this mountain that the world says we should climb in order to be successful and happy and realize at the end of a career, the end of a life, we've climbed the wrong numb.
We're all a work in progress. Growth has no end.
Your story is still being written. You're the writer and the narrator. There's no limits to self improvement because no one can ever truly reach a state of perfection.
Everything around us is always changing, and so we must evolve too. Don't ever make the mistake of thinking that you're finished. It doesn't matter how far you still need to go.
All that matters is that you're still trying.
It's not just about what do you want, it's especially about what are you willing to sacrifice for this. This is the question. What type of sacrifices are you willing to go through?
What type of suffering are you willing to take? And based on that, it determines what can you reach.
If you have a dream,
if you have a goal in life that you want to accomplish, I can tell you hard work, dedication, determination.
Take small steps and sooner or later, they will continue to grow and grow and grow into bigger accomplishments. Believe in yourself, stay strong, stay focused.
No matter what, the bad times don't last forever. If someone tells you, you can. You prove to them that you can.
If someone fires you from a job, when one door closes, another door opens. Always believe in yourself. Don't try to be like anyone else.
Live your ideas to the fullest and always believe that no matter what happens in your life, it's for a greater purpose.
Like, I can't say this enough. Stop waiting. Do not waste your life waiting, worrying, or wishing for things to change.
You gotta want it enough to do the work. Your dreams have a brick path that will get paved every single day, one brick at a time.
How many times have you told yourself you're gonna do it? How many times have you told yourself tomorrow? How many times have you told people what you were going to do?
You know where all that talking has gotten you? Nowhere. You have not moved the needle once.
I know it kinda feels like you're doing it when you talk about doing it, when you think about doing it, when you plan to do it, but the reality is you have not done anything. So when are you gonna do it? At what point does the talking stop and the action begin?
If it's at any other point than right now, you are not serious. You don't wanna do it.
You wanna keep indulging in the that got you in the position where you want to change instead of just actually changing. Nobody who is that serious about change knowing how hard it is to change waits until tomorrow to do it because they don't wanna spend another second being anything other than what they could be.
Consistency is having a goal and when you wake up that day and you don't feel like it, you still do what you told yourself you was gonna do. That's all consistency is.
It is it is it is the days you don't feel like doing it and you realize that I am where I am because of other people's sacrifice. I gotta get up and make it happy even though I don't wanna get up and make it happen. Make your future dream a present fact
by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. So whatever it is that you would like to experience in your life, you must be able to feel it. So live in the feeling of being the one you want to be and that you shall be.
Every feeling makes a subconscious impression.
And unless it is counteracted by a more powerful feeling of an opposite nature, it must be expressed.
Greatest people on the planet have suffered the most. Suffering is not bad. I'm suggesting suffering is awesome.
The the ego runs from suffering because it's the death of the ego. But I believe pain, difficult times, failure, loss is purification and preparation for personal heroism.
You are not your losses. One misstep doesn't defy who you are. If you've lost or failed, so what?
Stop being the victim. Feeling sorry for yourself isn't gonna get you any closer to your goal. It's not a loss if you learn something.
So take accountability for the damage that was done and just keep moving forward.
Many times people want to rush, they want to accelerate the journey, but they don't understand that the journey is lifelong. There is no end goal.
There is no end destination. You are in this journey from the moment you were born until you die. Today is just another what?
Brick that you're laying to build your ideal house.
We have a choice to accept life as it is or be an active force for good to decide, I don't wanna just survive.
This is not me. What it takes to survive and what it takes to live, those are two totally different things.
Do the things that they others won't do in order to have the things tomorrow others won't have.
Where you are now is just a reflection of your past thoughts, your past thinking.
So if you wanna change your future, you gotta change your thoughts now and then put them into action ultimately.
You have to go through the fire first. You have to experience the full fall into complete self loathing in order to come around to something like the forgiving of oneself.
It's when you skip responsibility, when you use a substitute emotion like guilt, which is of no use to anyone. But if you feel the real thing, which is shame, hatred, humiliation, and self loathing, that is the door.
And if you get through that, then you can forgive yourself.
You can never lose faith. That's the key. You have to believe in something that you can't see.
You have to believe when you can't when you don't see no way how.
You have to stop. You have to stop giving in to every little short term impulse that enters your brain. You have to stop giving in to whatever feels good in the moment.
You are going down an empty road. And the further you go down that road, the more you try to satisfy that appetite, the appetite just grows.
It can never be satisfied. So long as you try to satisfy your carnal desires and your short term impulses, you are going to live a life of suffering.
But if you choose to suffer upfront, you pay in full now, you are going to become somebody that you are proud of. You are going to become somebody that you respect, and that feeling is so much more satisfying and so much longer lasting than any other form of cheap dopamine that you're chasing after. Walk away from that path now because it is leading you absolutely nowhere.
Your back is against the wall and every single one of you can relate to because this is what's difficult about failure. The disappointment is on you.
It is your fault and you go through failure alone. Failure gives you two choices.
You stay down or you get up. All of you understand the disappointment of failure. And I can stay down or I can get my ass up, and I'm in the getting up business.
Someday, it's gonna be your last day. It's gonna be our last day. So I'm gonna live every day as if it's my last day, and do stuff that I always wanted to do because I don't wanna oh, man.
I'm dying tomorrow. I'm dying now and I missed it. I don't wanna think about what I could have, should have done.
I wanna do it now and I don't care about talent. I just care about doing it now because I want it. I wanna do it and it's within me.
I think you know you know what you're supposed to do. Deep down inside, think everybody does.
A lot of people just don't go after it, you know. And like most people start out they say I wanna be at this, but I'm gonna get that to make sure I have something to fall back on. And what you're doing is you're setting yourself up with faith because you're going there's a possibility that I'm a fall back.
And when you put that out there, then you fall back. But if you just say, hey, this is what I wanna do and you go do it, you usually get your stuff the way you want it, man.
You know, courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes, it's the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering, I will try again tomorrow.
The journey towards your dreams starts with the courage to begin, to take that first step despite the uncertainty that lies ahead. It's about acknowledging your fears and at the same time not letting them hold you back.
Every great achievement began with the decision to try, to step into the unknown. The path may not always be clear and the destination may seem distant, yet every step you take is a victory.
It's a testament to your strength, your resilience. Remember the only impossible journey is the one you never begin.
So muster your courage, take that first step, and watch as the path unfolds before you.
It's okay to be a little lost. It's okay to not know.
It's okay to be a little bit confused. It is okay. You know, stop beating yourself up so much about it.
Stop feeling like you need to be there or with this person or at that point in life or you need to have what they had. Just take a step back, take a breath and just be where your feet are.
It is okay. It is just a season in your life. It's just a period in your journey.
It's not going to last forever.
When you die, you'll be dead for a very long time. Also, I don't know if you know this, you were not born for a very long time.
Even though life is long, it's also if you take a step up, short.
The concept of not squeezing the shit out of it from a happiness standpoint, from a trying standpoint, from an ambitious standpoint is ludicrous to me.
You know for a fucking fact in your mind, Yeah. I should probably be doing it.
And then you don't do it. Mean, you just cheat yourself.
If you got something that you want, what is stopping you from getting it? You gotta realize that you're in complete control.
Right? You're behind the wheel every fucking day.
Life is too short to keep pushing your dreams aside. Those two simple words can hold so much power over you.
Not yet implies that your dreams are just beyond your reach, that you're not ready, and that the time isn't right. But let me tell you something, the time will never be perfect and you will never feel completely ready.
The truth is life doesn't wait for you to catch up.
It moves forward with or without you.
Art is art about change is not making same choices you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, you're going to feel uncomfortable because you're stepping from the known into the unknown.
You have to be willing to suffer when everybody else gives up. You have to be able to endure when everybody else packs it in. And this is what creates greatness.
And without that vision of what you're trying to be, without that conscious decision that I am going to do this no matter what the fuck happens, you can never achieve it because you don't have the motivation to stick through the hard times when everybody else quits.
Not willing to sacrifice for your goals, that's okay. You just need to know that your goals will become the sacrifice.
You have to give up what you want now for what you want most. And I think if you're not willing to do that, that's cool. Just know you'll never you'll never get to where you really wanna be.
Pain that you go through is temporary, but the greatness on the other side is forever. It's the thing that we always gotta constantly remember and if we could just get past that pain threshold, training, whatever it is, and on the other side of that is the good it's the greatness.
So get past that threshold then get to your greatness.
But what if life wasn't about happiness? What if life is about experiencing every aspect and every emotion that life has?
Wouldn't you want to experience the full set and range of emotions that life has to offer you?
The sadness, the heartbreaks, the joy. Right? You can't have happiness without sorrow.
You can't have pleasure without pain. And to neglect one thing is to neglect life.
And as you begin to challenge yourself, you discover some things about yourself that you don't know right now.
Make your move before you're ready. We're instructed in in life to walk by faith and not by sight. See, you want to really begin to stretch yourself.
You wanna become a risk taker. You wanna raise the bar on yourself. Most people won't do that.
See, most people engage in low life living, low risk living. This God said, if you're not willing to risk, you cannot grow.
And if you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. And if you cannot become your best, you can't be happy. And if you can't be happy, then what else is there?
I just said I refuse to be a victim to these circumstances. So a victim consciousness is when we allow something in our outer environment to control the way we feel and think.
Something in my outer environment, some person or some condition is controlling the way I think and feel. But that's not the truth. That's just a response.
Right? So anything that controls our thoughts and feelings, well, causes us to be victim to those things.
And the stronger the emotion we feel to some circumstance in our life, the more we pay attention to it. And where we place our attention is where we place our energy. So we're giving our life force.
We're giving our power away to that circumstance.
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore, the fount of all invention and innovation.
In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
We have a vision. And what a vision is, is the ability to see that which cannot be seen. That's why we call it vision.
It literally lives in our imagination. It is the equivalent of an iceberg. That's what vision is.
It's being able to see that which no one else can see because it lies beneath.
Because that's what it means to wake up every single day to advance a cause. It means that we devote our lives to building what which that which has not been built, to advancing what has not been advanced, to showing that which is not seen, and not obsessing with the excesses the successes we've had and how much iceberg is above the ocean, but how much more work we have to do.
And it all started with a tiny little bit of ice sticking above the ocean.
Treat yourself like you're someone that you care about. You make the world a much much worse place if you don't take care of yourself.
So you should bloody well take care of yourself, you know, because it's partly because you have something valuable to bring into the world. That's the thing about being an individual.
It's the thing that as an individual, you have a light that you have to bring into the world and that if you don't bring it into the world, the world is a dimmer place and that's a bad thing because when the world is a dim place, it can get very very very dark.
Deep and lasting fulfillment. The thing that as a human makes us feel good. The thing that we're all secret deep down no matter what you tell people you're chasing, the thing you're actually chasing is fulfillment.
You wanna feel good about who you are. You wanna feel good about your contributions. You wanna feel good about meaning and purpose in your life.
So those are the things ultimately that people are chasing. They think that money is gonna give that to them. If you wanna always be moving towards your goal, you wanna be optimized, you gotta learn to get control of your emotions, understand to tell yourself a narrative that isn't predicated on necessarily identifying what is objectively true.
It's identifying what's going to work to get me to my goal.
Imagination has no fences to it, has no boundaries. It's it's more than what other people maybe see for your life.
I think imagination is the cousin to go beyond what is expected began to find out very quickly that they began to see things, experience things that they never would have before.
Imagination feeds off of the fact that there's always an answer, that there's always a better way.
That's usually there are more than one answer. So imagination feeds that creative mind which allows you to see, do, feel, think, experience things that you would never do at any other time.
Imagination has the ability to take you from the world that you live in to the world that you could live in.
All the crazy things that you can think about. When you imagine, don't put a limit.
Be as wide as you can be. In creating the image of the world that you want to create without any hesitation, without any limitation.
Be as wide as it can be in your imagination as if you are writing a social fiction. We write science fiction all the time, but unfortunately, we don't write social fictions.
Fictions are the driving force. Like in science, in technology, science fiction becomes a driving force.
It makes things happen. Similarly, if you have done the social fiction, it will make it happen.
And one of the best things you could possibly be is a inspirational example. So that's not nothing.
That's something. Live properly in your defiance of the crowd, right?
Make your own course. Allow yourself to be guided by your own genuine principles.
Isn't it fantastic
that if there's no purpose, you have nothing to fulfill, you can just live? No. But you want a purpose and not a simple purpose, you want a God given purpose.
It's very dangerous.
They may overlap on some issues and we may feel that we are one with each other, but my mind is my mind, your mind is your mind, isn't it? But there is no such thing as my life and your life.
This is a living cosmos. You captured a little bit. I captured a little bit.
That's about it. But now we think this is my life and that is your life. There is no such thing.
This is a living cop cosmos. You blown a small bubble. Somebody might have blown a little bigger bubble.
If you capture more life, then you will see you have more grace. The depth, dimension and scope of your life is determined by how much life you capture within you.
It doesn't matter what kind of body you have, what kind of intelligence you have. If you have not captured substantial life within you, you will live a small life. That's how it is.
Not you as a person. That's not important.
That you as a piece of life, it's very important
because that is the basis of everything. When I say that is the basis for everything, the universe exists for you only because you are, isn't it?
The world exists for you only because you are, otherwise it won't exist in your experience. So in every way, this is important.
So what is the purpose for this?
See, if you had a purpose and if you fulfilled it, after that what would you do? It is just that life is so intricate and so phenomenally intricate that if you spend a 10,000 years looking at it carefully, you still will not know it entirely.
Just loosen up your life a little bit, laugh a little more, involve yourself with people around you, do things that you think is not so important.
Don't do things which are very important, do simple things. Very important you do simple things.
Very important things you're doing in your life, you will become dead serious.
Burton Russell said, if you're beginning to think that what you're doing is very important, you need to take a holiday.
Holiday is every day in those twenty four hours you must take a holiday from your seriousness.
Seriousness has come essentially because of your self importance. You hold yourself as an important person. I want you to see you are like a speck of dust in this existence.
Tomorrow morning if you disappear, nothing will happen in this world. Everything will happen wonderfully well even if you're not there.
Every human being should be aware of this every moment of his life. It does not matter what the whole world says about.
It does not matter how significant a work you're doing. You must understand that tomorrow morning, the world will go on fine without you.
Create fear, you have to use excessive imagination. To not be in fear, you don't have to do anything.
Where is happening? Because of excessive imagination, things that have not happened, you're creating.
What may happen in your mind happens in thousand different formats. You cannot fight or you cannot overcome that which does not exist.
We can overcome something with that exists. You cannot overcome that which does not exist. You just have to give up an effort.
Enjoy the fear. Start using your mind differently. It's just gotten into your pattern.
It's just gotten into a pattern of just creating horror movies all the time. You have watched enough horror movies. They're boring.
Treat something else.
You will it's not that if you produce these movies, those things will happen in your life. Still, they may not happen. At least you enjoy the
movie. In reality, it may not happen, so what? At least you enjoy what's happening in your mind if you cannot enjoy what's happening in the world, isn't it?
That much probably every human being deserves, isn't it so? Even if the world is not kind to him, at least his own mind should be kind to him, should produce some nice movies.
Do not even think of success. Just enhance your capabilities. Strive to enhance who you are.
And what you can do, will anyway do, isn't it? Right now, you have an idea of success, but you don't have the competence for that.
You want to go somewhere, but you don't have the legs to get there. Now naturally there will be fear, naturally there'll be all kinds of unnecessary struggles and emotions. Instead that at this stage in your life, if you just focus on seeing how to enhance this human being to the highest possible level that you can, success will be a downhill run, not an uphill task.
So if you are going downhill, there's no fear, isn't it? Because whether I can get there or not, whether I can get there or not, you are working towards somebody else's idea of success.
You're working towards somebody else's idea of success. That is not success. Your success is you as a human being.
You found your full potential. This is your success. I
can't get a break in life. I hate that damn mentality but I can't get a break. You aren't given any breaks in life.
You make them for yourself. We are all being tested in life. While my test is different than yours, you will be tested.
And how you face that test and how you overcome that test determines the rest of your life.
Life is meant to be lived joyously. It truly is. If you're doing and living a life that's not joyous and and happy, something is wrong and you need to make a change.
Right? We're here on this planet for a finite amount of time. Make it a good one.
When my guru was dying, one of the last things he ever said was, what an amazing life. I would not have traded it for anything in the world.
And I said to myself, what beautiful words to hear from a dying man. I would love to be able to say in my last breath, look back on my life and go, what an amazing life it was. And that was just I couldn't do it again even if I try.
That was just fantastic. In order to do that, we really need to know what we want. But we begin by understanding our mind and learning how to manage our energy and wisely invest our energy.
So if you're starting a new chapter because you're excited and you're reinventing yourself, that's fabulous.
Still take time to complete the last chapter that you are in. So you step into the new chapter with all of the wisdom and the gratitude and the learning and the growth that you gained.
If you are skirting a new chapter as so many of us do because we are running away from the old us, we're running away from a bad relationship, closing the door on something that wasn't working, you better make sure you take the time to think through and journal about this last chapter.
Who you've been, the habits you no longer want to repeat, the mistakes that you make, what you've learned, what you're running from, and more importantly, what changes you're going to make and how this new chapter is gonna support you in doing it and becoming the person that you're meant to be.
Without that intentional moment of reflection and without that intentional moment where you're going to list out the behaviors, the thinking patterns, the habits you're changing, you're just gonna take all that crap you're running from right into this new chapter.
So what you have to start doing is realizing that no matter where you're in life, no one's coming back to help you. So it starts with that person in that mirror.
You have to realize you are on your own now. And whatever else you believe in, I don't care what you believe in, but on earth is a very lonely journey. It starts with the accountability and look and say, hey, all these things are coming back.
I have to face myself. And you have to own all those things that people may have done to you.
Now it's yours.
You have to figure out ways to move forward because you're not coming back.
What determines your resources? We said decision shaped destiny, is my focus here.
If decision shaped destiny, what determines it is three decisions. What are you gonna focus on? Right now, you have to decide what you're gonna focus on.
In this second, consciously or unconsciously. The minute you decide to focus on something, you gotta give it a meaning. And whatever that meaning is produces emotion.
Is this the end or the beginning?
Or is this the roll of the dice? An emotion then creates what we're gonna do or the action. So think about your own life, the decisions that have shaped your destiny.
And that sounds really heavy, but in the last five or ten years, fifteen years, how many been some decisions you've made that if you made a different decision, your life would be completely different.
But if you really want to become extraordinary, you've got to separate your self esteem from being wrong. You have to.
Because otherwise, you're never going to see the opportunity to get better. And once that word yet is lingering out there, suddenly it becomes a question of time allocation. So you know you could get good at it, but it's gonna take a lot of time and energy.
So what are the skills you really wanna get good at? And that goes back to that clarity. What do I need to get good at in order to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish?
It does not need to be something that somebody else values. It needs to be the thing I have chosen to value that I've built into my life, this worship around getting good at that thing.
And because I value myself for pursuing that, and I value myself for admitting when I'm wrong, and I value myself for staring nakedly at my inadequacies, every day I'm getting better.
It's important for lost young people, male and female alike, to develop a vision and take on some responsibility and understand
that they have a vital role to play in the world, that the lack of their best hurts everything.
There's so many times in life you don't wanna be doing what you're doing. You can't just quit. Remember this, it's in the hobby, it's in the choke, it's in lifestyle.
So what you say to yourself, support. There's no coach, there's no trainer to keep you going. It's only you.
The whole thing is this. Don't say a word. Stay uncommon amongst uncommon people.
You're never done. Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done.
Life's one big head game. You play with yourself. If you lose, it's because you allow life to get in your head.
When they look in the mirror, they're just trying to see what's on the surface. But winning and losing wants to know what's inside of you. It wants to know what makes you tick.
It wants to know what your desires are. It wants to know what your ego is. It wants to know what your limitations are.
It wants to know what your mindset is. It wants to know everything about you because winning does not lie.
When you look in the mirror, you can lie and see what's on the surface. You cannot lie what's going on inside.
And that's what people are not willing to see. The lies that are truly going on inside of them that are not allowing them to win over and over or sometimes even win once. You have to look.
Winning requires you to go so far deep inside yourself. It's way beyond the surface. It's way beyond internal.
It it's going to a place that a lot of people haven't visited in a long long time because they're afraid to visit that person because when they visit that person, they don't know who that person is anymore.
See, think we're all hardwired to do something really special with our life. And everything goes on the inside shows on the outside.
See, we're we're gifted with with faculties of the mind that the average person knows nothing about. You have intuition, the will, reason, imagination, perception, memory.
That's what separates us from all the rest of forms of life. Our imagination. The hill said, it's the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world's ever known.
I can use my imagination to project myself into the future and bring the future into the present and start living there. You work from the imagination, you don't work to it.
You work from it.
If you don't know where you want to be in five years, you're already there. So if you're in a place now where you're feeling lost, scared, confused, paralyzed by indecision, frustrated, whatever the the myriad of negative emotions are that people struggle with on a daily basis.
If that's where you're at now and you don't have that clear vision on where you want to go, what the meaning and purpose of your life is going to be, then it's inevitably going to be exactly what you're living right now.
Just imagine it. You born free.
You are able to walk, able to talk, able to see.
My goodness. Able to hear. Just look at you.
How much you have? How much you will give somebody? I am a human being.
Nothing human can be alien to me. It's a deliberating phrase. And so is the idea that you have the possibility and the probability of being a rainbow in somebody's mouth.
It's not about the rain. It's what the rain represents. Life is always giving you a test.
Trying to give you a way out. Trying to give you excuse not to show up. Guess what?
That it had the mentality to show up every day of your life. Grow what life throws at you. It's our responsibility to show up to the Colosseum of life.
To prepare for battle. I don't care what you're going through, what life's thrown at you, what's your responsibility to find a new 100%?
Take it upon yourself to do that.
Winning is in all of us. We all want to win, but the path people take to get to winning, everybody wants the end result and they want to feel the sugar and the the confetti and all that other stuff.
But what you have to endure to win, no one wants to talk about. And that's what really winning is about because you spend more time enduring it and being in a a and not in a good place.
No matter what you do in life, where you're at, this is what winning takes and it's in all of us.
It's in all of us. You find wins every single day.
So on our little planet, we're actually it's a core philosophy of mine. We're we're brothers and sisters on a little planet.
And when I look at most people on the planet, it's no judgment. I just I see people who are they're in scarcity versus generosity. I see so many people saying, you know, when I was a kid, had all this creativity.
I don't know where it happens. Psychology of can't versus mentality of possibility.
I see people in pain. I see people playing victim. I mean, wouldn't you agree most people on the planet at some form form or another, whether it's with their creativity prosperity or their personal lives, they're they're stuck in victimhood.
Write for twenty minutes about what your life could look like in three to five years if it was going the way that you wanted it to go. So it'd be good for you. Be good for you, good for your family.
Good for society. That could be good. You need a vision.
Okay. Then the next step is, okay. Now imagine that you let your weaknesses and character flaws get the upper hand and like drive you into the ground.
What does that look like in five years? So that's like a horrific vision. Right?
And so that's a good thing because now you've got something to run away from and so if you're anxious, having something bad to run away from is really motivating, you know, and so you can run towards the positive thing and run away from the negative thing.
That that increases your motivation. And then in the next part, you asked to make that into a detailed and articulated plan. And so that can help like you say, well, you're not sure what habits to change or or or what what personality traits to transform.
You gotta kind of think about that in relationship to what you want.
And now they build their own field and now there's energy to heal. Now there's energy to create a new life. Now there's energy for the mystical moment because they've overcome their old personality self.
So I think, you know, it's not like thinking positively. That's not the message.
It's it's overcoming, overcoming, overcoming, overcoming until we become somebody else.
And when that occurs, and the person starts thinking differently, and they start acting differently, and they start feeling differently, they're a new personality, and they they start seeing those synchronicities and serendipities.
Now crossing that river of change, the creative process now gets exciting because what thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain kind of attention and intention.
When you can be trusted with the small things and the small moments, you get trusted with more and more and more and so like, it helps to just in that moment and it's in those painful moments that you realize how powerful you are.
We all know that Like you really recognize it and not rushing through the pain because you can't rush the healing. But our challenge is we try and rush through the pain rather than reflect through the pain.
Healing is meant to be slow because it buys you time. It buys you reflection. It gives you so much space to slow down.
Pain makes you pay attention.
As we go out in the world, we take on the beliefs and the emotional patterns of those who influence us, you know.
And then what happens is we actually forget who we truly are.
And as we connect with our mortality, we realize on the last hour of my last day, what do I want said about me?
And have the discipline to architect your life so each day is a mountain climb towards that Mount Everest.
The simple part that most people don't understand is that every thought we think and every word we speak is creating our future.
It's as though our thoughts go out into the universe and are accepted and brought back to us as experience.
In your bias right now, you're thinking, okay. If I get what I want, then I'm gonna be happy.
And what I'm showing you is that that's true. But likewise, also realize that there's another way of looking at things where you could trade yourself to have gratitude right now.
You could trade yourself to laugh right now. You could trade yourself to be present to the moment right now. You could discover that when you think less and allow space in the thinking so you can get presence, a lot of genius and brilliance and spontaneity and awareness will come to you naturally.
You may even discover that you've been getting in your own way. You may discover that you've been making yourself more tired and miserable than you have to be. You may discover that your most natural state is that of joy and that a lot of modern society, consumer culture, and ego fulfillment has robbed you of a naturally happy state, that you could have spent the last several years of your life in the fucking zone super happy, and then instead you've been chasing fantasies.
You may discover that too.
Part of us always knows that we're just a doctor's visit away or a phone call away from being starkly reminded with with the fact of our own mortality or of those poses to us.
Now I'm sure many of you in this room have experienced this in some form. You must know how uncanny it is to suddenly be be thrown out of the normal course of your life and just be given the full time job of not dying or caring for someone who is.
But the the one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal.
It's not just what they it's not just what they did with their time. It's not just that they spent too much time working or or compulsively checking email. It's it's that they they cared about the wrong things.
They they regret what they cared about.
Their their attention was bound up in petty concerns a year after year year when life was normal.
And this is a paradox of course because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming?
Don't you know that there's gonna come a day when you'll be sick or someone close to you will die and you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention?
And you'll think, what what was I doing?
You know this and yet if you're like most people, you'll spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you'll live forever.
It's like watching a bad movie for the fourth time or or bickering with your spouse. These things only make sense in light of eternity.
We bought into this this complete falsehood that at at some point, you're gonna have the courage.
At some point, you're gonna have the confidence. And it's total bull frankly. Don't are we allowed to swear on this show?
Okay. Um, it's it's complete garbage. And so there are so many people in the world, and and and, you know, you may be watching this right now, and you have these incredible ideas, and what you think is missing is motivation.
And that's not true. Because the way that our minds are wired and the fact about human beings is that we are not designed to do things that are uncomfortable or scary or difficult.
Our brains are designed to protect us from those things because our brains are trying to keep us alive. And in order to change, in order to build a business, in order to be the best parent, the best spouse, to do all those things that you know you wanna do with your life, with your work, with your dreams, you're gonna have to do things that are difficult, uncertain, or scary, which sets up this problem for all of us.
You're never gonna feel like it. Motivation's garbage. You you only feel motivated to do the things that are easy.
Right? Why do you think that is? Oh, I know exactly why that is.
Because I I I I've studied this so much because for me, one of the hardest things to figure out was why is it so hard to do the little things that would improve my life?
And what I've come to realize and what we'll talk a lot about today is that the way that our minds are designed is our minds are designed to stop you at all costs from doing anything that might hurt you.
And the way that that that that this all happens is it all starts with something super subtle that none of us ever catch, and that is with this habit that all of us have that nobody's talking about.
We all have a habit of hesitating. We have an idea.
You're sitting in a meeting. You have this incredible idea. And instead of just, you know, saying it, you stop and you hesitate.
Now what none of us realize is that when you hesitate, just that moment, that micro moment, that small hesitation, it sends a stress signal to your brain.
So then your brain goes to work to protect you. It has a million different ways to protect you. One of them is called the spotlight effect.
It's a known phenomenon where your brain magnifies risk. Why? To pull you away from something that it perceives to be a problem.
And so you can truly trace every single problem or complaint in your life to silence and hesitation.
Those are decisions. And what I do and what's changed my life is waking up and realizing that motivation's garbage. I'm never gonna feel like doing the things that are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary or new, so I need to stop waiting until I feel like it.
And number two, I am one decision away from a totally different marriage, a totally different life, a totally different job, a totally different income, a totally different, uh, relationship with my kids.
Your life comes down to your decisions. And if you change your decisions, you will change everything.
People should stop complaining. Right. People should figure out who the fuck they are.
Good call. People should not listen to America propaganda of fixing the shit they suck at.
They should be tripling down on what they're good at. They should be confident in certain areas, but you're not gonna become Beyonce or you know like your bone structure is a certain way like you're not gonna solve everything.
Your IQ can get a little bit better, but don't worry about the incremental. Figure out what you've put you on fire and you're halfway decent at. If you're lucky enough right now to be listening and you're good at what you like become tunnel vision.
Because there's way too many voices telling you what and how and here's the other thing and this is the big one John because you have a humongous audience. The biggest thing that I've seen dividends from have the conversation with the person that's holding you back. The reason most people who are listening right now are not doing that thing is they're worried about the opinion of somebody.
Usually, their mother, usually their father, and the reality is is that your spouse may be the person holding you back and you have to have that conversation.
Shut them off. We have to get to a place where you're doing you because the number one thing that scares the out of me is regret and you're gonna sit there at 72 and you're gonna say I wish I wish I wish and whether it's money or spend more time with your family, there's a million ways to do this.
If you're obsessed by memories of the past and most of those are negative, so anxiety provoking most often, then there's a lot of you that stuck in the past.
And what that means is you didn't map the territory well enough and the parts of your brain that are alarm systems, anxiety systems are saying, no, no, there's holes in the way you're looking at the world. There's holes in the way that you're looking in the world and you fell in them once and you don't know where they are and you don't know how to fill them and you don't know how to walk around them and so you can't forget them and you can't forget them.
You can't forget them.
You start back there. Your body is still reacting as if there's an emergency that could happen again that you haven't fixed.
You know, why is open our eyes closed? You know, when you're passionate about something, you know, when people can't get up in the morning and they can't get out of bed, I'm gonna tell you why.
Because they can predict the feeling of everything that's gonna happen in their life and their bodies resigned to the familiar. It says, oh, another mundane day.
But remember when you were a kid and you were going on a field trip?
What happened then? You were up dressed and ready to go before your parents were up. You know why?
Because you knew something unexpected was gonna happen. That's how we should live our lives. Waking up with the understanding that you expect the unexpected and something unusual should happen in our life as a result of our efforts.
And it's just those beginning moments where it begins to happen and we begin to prove to ourselves how powerful it really are. So take time in the morning, in the evening, in the rest of the day, check-in with yourself at certain times to see if you're still in that energy. And if you're not, excuse yourself for a second, raise your energy and step back into your life.
If keep doing that over and over again, you'll become less frustrated, less impatient, less judgmental. It'll just become something of the past and you'll be someone else.
But if you can really accept the fact that every time you think a thought and every time you speak a word, you are literally painting your future, making your dinner, whatever you wanna call it. You are creating and you're creating your own life.
And this is simple, but it's not easy to accept.
You don't have a real loss because that only occurs when you love something more than love yourself.
We rise to our maximum potential when we're of service to others. And not only our maximum potential, but our our greatest usefulness and living in that potential and usefulness gives us the most kind of rich human satisfaction.
On the one hand, the meaning of life is propagation of yourself, she is. On the other hand, I would say you make her own deep meaning. And we and we all do that and we live again, we lead a better life.
If we have if we develop something important, something else writes music, plays music, all sorts of ways you can give meaning to a life.
Your personal relationships, your love for your spouse and your children etcetera. These these all get mean to life.
You have to work on yourself. We have to have an unstoppable attitude and no excuse is acceptable and you've got to to make it a priority, a non negotiable in your life, a whole of a constant vision of what it is you want to achieve.
See it accomplished and go all out, find a way to win in spite of the setbacks, in spite of the disappointments, in spite of your failures.
I I tell people you will fail your way to success. I have the saying is life knocked you down, try and land on your back because if you could look up, you can get up.
When people ask me like, what's the one thing that led you to having the kind of success that you've had? I say that.
I switched my identity, my sense of pride and self esteem around to something that is truly antifragile.
Because now if you tell me that I'm stupid, I will say awesome. In what way? Because if you tell me in what way I'm wrong, if you tell me in what way I'm ignorant, then I can learn.
Go back. The only belief that matters, you can learn anything you set your mind to. So someone telling you that you're stupid or undereducated or you don't know what you're talking about, fantastic.
And that's where most people shut down. It's like, oh, that really hurts. You throw the psychological immune system, you explain them away, they don't make as much money as I do, all things will probably be equally true.
But where does that get you? It keeps you ignorant to a truth about you, by the way, that the rest of the world world knows. In fact, here's something if you're really ready for some truth.
All the things that you hope nobody notices about you, all the weaknesses in your game and your skill set that you think are so wonderfully hidden, everyone knows all of them. Like, you're only protecting yourself from the truth.
Everybody else is already thinking it. But becoming antifragile, it is the single most important thing you can do to supercharge your life and get where you want to go.
And that you have to always go back to that student mindset. You have to always go back to that emptiness. And I think one of the reasons why we struggle with that is we think that when we're full we're safe.
Our ego makes us believe that when you're full, when you think you know it all, that's when you're safe. Craziest thing is that's when you're at your weakest.
Everything I went through, if you learn how to flip that muck on top of this head and say hang on, hang on, there's so much power in this thing. If you look at life as it is a trial ground, a testing ground for where you need to belong, where you need to go, suffering is a fact of life.
If you look at suffering the right way, it is a great tool to callous your mind.
It's hard to say what the soul means metaphysically because you know, say beyond the beyond the confines of a single human being, we do have this sense that the soul can expand itself into something that's greater than well greater than it has.
Capacity for growth and we do have the sense that the soul can expand itself to the point where it it's enlightened for that it's working as efficiently as possible to transform everything that's unnecessarily painful and malevolent about the world into what's positive and good and that it does that as a consequence of confronting the world with courage and truth And I I think that's right.
And I do think that that means that the soul participates in something eternal, which is the attempt of being itself to transform what's unnecessarily painful and malevolent into what's good.
And I think that it's a mistake to underestimate the importance of that because I don't think that you can live life, a life of sufficient profundity to protect yourself from being corrupted by suffering malevolence without adopting a responsibility that's commensurate with that set of ideas.
I think that you either orient yourself upward, you know, to the star above the horizon and try desperately to improve the structure of being or you work at counter premises to it and make things worse.
How people live their lives that you know is a result of the story they believe about themselves. He interrupted my story and I left there with a heart full of faith, not a heart full of fear. Zeke said, most people in a fearful situation, they forget everything and run.
But there are small number. The road to life is straight and narrow, few there be that find it, who face everything and rise.
You have to be who you are every day of your life and never care about anybody who gets in your way that said you're not doing something the proper way.
And what happens is this, you start to create a whole bunch of people that aren't even yourself.
You you never figure out who you are. You you never live up to your dreams, your ambition. You you live up to what whoever is around you that you like so much that you want to emulate and be like so much, you live their dreams.
You lose your power. You often have powers owning yourself.
Makes me think of the lotus. The lotus is a flower that grows in swamps and yet it's one of the most beautiful flowers in the world.
So this first way to navigate hard times is to really gather perspective, to really ask yourself, you know, to go up to your mountaintop and then look look across and really get a sense of the truth of what's going on.
You know, your gratitude, what you're grateful for, how could this be worse. Perspective also involves remembering the shortness of life.
It's okay. You use whatever means you want to feel the sweetness of your emotion, but you must understand. It's the sweetness of your emotion.
I am asking you, what happens within you? Why is it determined by somebody else? What happens within you if it's determined by somebody else?
This is the worst form of slavery.
It's not only love, your happiness, your joy, your peacefulness, your love, anything that happens within you.
When your inner experience is determined by something or somebody, that is the worst form of
Discovering your why is just the beginning. In order to enjoy all the benefits of having a clearly articulated why, you'll need to have the courage and discipline to use it.
Like Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is hallucination. There is an ideal order of implementing your why. Though sometimes reality does get in the way, and it all starts with you.
Our natural tendency is to start with the tangible. We define our value by what we do.
What we do in life is we've all gone through suffer. We've all gone through hard times and we've made it.
But when you're in the midst of suffering, what our mind does is this, you think about the now and there's no strength in it.
Most people never go after what they want because they don't know every step they have to take to get there. Now, the only rule for reaching a goal that you have to know is knowing where you're going and knowing that you're going to get there.
You do not have to know how you're going to get there.
Because I think few things are as powerful to wake you up, to remind you about what's most important, to fuel your energy, to get you into the game so you let go of your fears and you do what you need to do to get big things done, then connect them to your own mortality. When you realize that every single day could be your last, or when you appreciate that no matter how long you live, life is a short ride, you just sort of let go of the fears, and you let go of the limits, and you live full on, and you seize opportunities, and you have real conversations with real people and you sort of wear your heart on your sleeve and you bring on the fullness of your authenticity and you do whatever it takes to get your loftiest dreams to get done.
See, first of all, you must decide, is your life in pursuit of happiness or is it an expression of joy? No.
Love is not something that you do. Love is something that you can become. It's your quality.
If your mind is in a certain way, it's joyful. If your emotions are in a certain way, it's loving. This is the quality of sweetness of body.
If your body becomes sweet and pleasant, it's called health and pleasure. If your mind becomes very pleasant, it's called peacefulness and joyfulness.
If your emotions become pleasant, it's called love and compassion. If your very life energy becomes pleasant, it is called blissfulness and ecstasy.
You need an ideal because you have nothing to aim at, but an ideal is a judge and you always fall short of the ideal. So how the hell can you have the benefits of having an ideal without having the crushing blow that goes along with having the judge that always regards you as insufficient?
You need a goal, but we don't want to let your distance from the goal crush you. So you got to set up a goal and then you got to make the goal, break the goal down into parts so that you can move towards it.
You have a fairly high likelihood of doing Set a high aim, but differentiate it down, so you know what the next step is and then make the next step difficult enough, so you have to push yourself past where you are, but but also provide yourself with a reasonable probability of success.
You only have to know two things. You have to know where you're going and you have to know that you're going to get there. You've got to see it in your mind.
Now, this is the beautiful scenario. This is what it's all about. Save that in your mind and think of it often.
Think. Every time you think of your goal and you're trying to figure out how you're gonna do it, what's the next step?
That's all you really have to know. One step at a time and you'll get to wherever you're going.
We live on a tiny planet, you know, large galaxy with trillions of other planets.
Are our problems really that big? That's perspective.
Body, your mind, your soul will wanna communicate with you but they can't communicate with you if you're always washing around and ever all over the place. So the actors,
the answers are not within me, the answers are within you and they become more clearer as you become more silent, more still and allow yourself to have that inner connection for more inner guide.
This life is a complete life by itself. If this is a complete life, it's joyful, loving, wonderful by its own nature. Now, when it's feeling so wonderful, it may want to share this wonderfulness with people around.
You can share this with thousands of people, but you also want a more intimate sharing to happen. For that, you need one person.
Things that happen in life you have no control over. You don't control your parents, where you're born, when you were born, what era, really what schools you go to, anything like that.
And then beyond that, just things happen to you. And and so the way I look at it, maybe 95, 96% of what happens in life, you have no control over.
It's just circumstances coming at you. But you have a little margin of control, And power is the ability to increase that tiny little margin to four, five, 6%.
And how do you increase that margin of control over circumstances, over people? Well, the the the gist of it is controlling yourself, Self mastering.
Power begins from within. If you're aware of who you are, if you're aware of what you're good at, what you're not good at, if you're able to see how emotions kind of govern your life, if you can learn what your weaknesses are and how to control them, you can't ever get complete control, but awareness is almost enough.
Slowly through this process of knowing who you are and understanding other people and how they operate so you don't make stupid mistakes in life, you can increase that little tiny margin more and more and more and you will be a person of power.
The capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people.
Know, Richard Branson's good friend of mine and Peter Guber, Steve Wynn, all these guys, they've never lost their hunger.
Most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount, make a certain amount of money and then they get comfortable and relax or to get a certain level of fitness and then they relax. But, you know, Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting. I mean, he's like on fire and he's 65 years old.
Warren Buffett is 85 years old. He's as driven today as when, you know, he began the journey. Right?
And so people that have that hunger I believe intelligence. I I love people that are wickedly smart. And I work to be wickedly smart by educating and training myself and so forth and training my brain.
But intelligent there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight their way out of a paper bag. Yes.
Right? Absolutely. Hunger is the ultimate driver.
Because if you're hungry, you can get the strategy, you can get the answer. If you can't model it, you can find it. So hunger
Understand yourself. That's step one. Yourself, if you don't really embody that da Vinci quote about the greatest form of mastery is mastery over oneself, if you don't embody that, you're in real trouble.
And the reason is it's gonna stop you from seeing opportunities to learn.
Why do think passion? I think passion is dangerous. Right?
So the throughout philosophy, especially in Stowe philosophy, they warn against the passions like lust, greed, anger, fear.
This is what this historically, passion has meant extreme emotions. Yes.
And so I I I tend I I tend to gravitate towards that definition. But I think purpose is better than passion.
Right? Because passion It's like a mission. Yeah.
Passion is like, I like this. It feels good. I want to do this.
Purpose is, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Here's why it's important.
And I'm and I'm not gonna stop until it's done. Like, who would you rather have work for you?
The guy that just really loves writing or the person who's, like, trying to write for a reason? You know? Yeah.
And and so that passion can be blinding and it can get you like, it's not enough just to love something or else everyone would do what they love. You also have to be good at it, and you also have to know how, like, how to make smart decisions and how to plan.
I mean, a lot of people, I think, don't know what their purpose is. Sure. They don't know how discover it.
They don't even know what they're passionate about. So how do you find a purpose, period?
How do you even go about saying, oh, this is my purpose. It's part of my life.
Yeah. Well, I think one of the reasons that people like to say find your passion is that sounds really smart and you don't like, no one's like, okay. Then what?
Right? Like, it's just it's just like it's like do what you love. You know?
It okay. Yeah. Then how?
You know? So when I when I'm saying purpose, I think it's about defining your goals, defining what the life you're trying to build is, and and having a real model for what you're doing.
Yeah. And for me, I've tried to I've tried to be very clear about what I'm trying to accomplish to myself so that I'm not getting distracted by all these.
Like I like to do lots of things. Me too. But I you gotta pick one to really get good at it, you know?
And it's also it's like if you're doing this thing because it means something to you and you know exactly what success looks like for you, it's nice because then you're not as distracted by the fact that so and so is posting photos of them surrounded by $100 bills on Instagram or on a yacht and a Visa or whatever. You know, you you wanna make sure that you're not comparing yourself to other people.
You wanna compare yourself against the progress you've made
to for whatever your purpose will never do that. That's where way to compare yourself as to how far you've come or what you've created as opposed to what everyone else has created around you. Well, you probably learned that in sports, right, where it's like it's
not about what other players are doing. It's about whatever you whatever game
or the previous week or what we've done. Yeah. Right.
Getting closer to our goal or to our vision. Everyone has their demons and battles. Of course.
It doesn't matter if they're like the richest person or the most successful or the most good looking Yes. They are most athletic. There's some battle I feel like we're always facing.
Yeah. It's hard to feel like I've got it all figured out in all areas of my life.
I don't know. Have you met anyone who's just like everything's figured out? Like Well, I would say have any challenges?
I would say the people who you feel like have it most figured out are probably struggling the deepest The most. Because you don't know what each person is wrestling with inside.
You don't know if that beautiful celebrity is wrestling with an eating disorder. You don't know if that guy is or whatever. Yeah.
You don't know if that guy who seems like he has a happy family, is miserable, and cheats on his wife. You know?
You don't know if that person who has complete who sold millions of albums feels like a failure because their parents never told them they love it. You know, you don't know what people are struggling with, and it's like so it's like you can't you can't compare yourself to that because you don't know what it costs them.
Do you know what I mean? You don't know what's inside. I
think Instagram ruined most people's social perception of themselves and each other. It's really easy to see others who are doing well and feel this core of anxiety in the pit of your stomach, this core of inadequacy because others seem to be always doing better than you, driving a nicer car, wearing better clothes, have a hotter girlfriend or boyfriend, have more fun at work, they're not even working, what are they doing?
I look at some of these people on Instagram, I think, man, how when how do you live?
Because I don't ever see doing anything that's remotely looking like work. The reality is, I mean, if you look around across campus, you know, I have fun here on a daily basis, but I'm working.
Like, I'm at the computer. I'm working. And I think that it's easy to get jealous of people who seem to be doing really well and think, why not me?
You know? What's wrong with me? Once you stop thinking like that and once you kind of detach the negative emotions from people who are successful and succeeding, it makes room for you to feel better about yourself and it doesn't put a lot of pressure on you.
It puts less pressure on you to be perfect.
When people who succeed and successful people inspire you, it makes you start to think about how you can do the things you're doing rather than think about why you're not able to do them. Right? So it's less about competition and more about, you know, creativity in terms of how you're gonna solve your problem.
Jealousy never helped anybody, man. And I'm not saying the whole like, oh, you know, if you don't if you don't have haters, you ain't doing well. I'm just talking from a basic human level.
Nelson Mandela supposedly said this. He said, you know, jealousy or hatred is like drinking drinking poison and expecting it to kill your enemies.
Right? That's the way you have to think about that feeling of jealousy when other people are doing well. Don't do it.
Look at it, become inspired by it, learn to live your own life better.
We humans tend to fixate on what we can see with our eyes. It it is the most animal part of our nature.
When we look at the changes and transformations in other people's lives, we see the good luck that someone had.
We see the book or the project that brings the money and the attention.
In other words, we see the visible signs of opportunity and success. What really allows for such dramatic changes are the things that occur on the inside of a person and are completely invisible.
The slow accumulation of knowledge and skills, the incremental improvements in work habits and the ability to withstand criticism.
Any change in people's fortune is merely the visible manifestation of all of that deep preparation over time.
By essentially ignoring this internal invisible aspect, we fail to change anything fundamental within ourselves.
And so in a few years time, we reach our limits yet again, we grow frustrated, we crave change, We grab at something quick and superficial, and we remain prisoners forever of these recurring patterns in our lives.
The answer, the key to the ability to transform ourselves is actually insanely simple, to reverse this perspective.
Stop fixating on what other people are saying and doing, on the money, the connections, the outward appearance of things.
Instead, look inward. Focus on the smaller internal changes that lay the groundwork for a much larger change in fortune.
It is the difference between grasping at an illusion and immersing yourself in reality, and reality is what will liberate and transform you.
This too shall pass. Whatever you're feeling, whether you're feeling great or whether you're feeling terribly, it's going to pass.
But if truly you could never feel good about yourself ever again, why would you want to go on? Even serving other people, you do it in part because of how beautiful it feels. So helping people understand that that will pass, that there will be something beautiful again waiting for them, but that what you build your self esteem around, what that ego is tied to is absolutely critical because if you tie it to being right, if you tie it to being good, if you tie it to being pious, if you tie it to anything that is fragile or tenuous, it can go away.
And then your ego is damaged and then the psychological immune system kicks in and then you start making really weird choices. So build your ego around something positive, build your ego around something that is truly anti fragile. Something that's anti fragile is not something that's resilient.
Resilient things are still defined by their breaking point. Their breaking point just happens to be far away. Anti fragile is the more it's attacked, the stronger it gets.
Right? Because inside of your comfort zone, you won't learn much about yourself.
Right? If you're just doing such stuff that just random stuff, stuff that is not challenging you, you won't really get those lessons. To get a good lesson in life, it actually takes a little bit of pain, a little bit of suffering, a little bit of failure, and a little bit of getting outside of that comfort zone.
And actually, the more you exit the comfort zone in that healthy way, you don't wanna go too far out to go to that red alert, you wanna still be in that yellow alert that you just said, and once you exit a little bit, you will just exit enough to be able to learn, to able to be able to realize lessons that are helpful for you.
And that's the third part that is is important to understand is that you can only learn about yourself through challenges, through exiting the comfort zone. You won't learn much through theory. You will only learn through action.
Through theory, I mean, you can gather information, can gather ideas how to take action better, but it's not gonna replace action itself. And you know this. I mean, everybody who's been through college, I mean, I got a master's in computing.
All that theory that I that I knew and that I learned and all that stuff, now I can Google in five minutes. Right? In five minutes, I can Google my entire college.
What does that give me? Pretty much nothing. But all the practical stuff that I learned, I the theory that I've applied, the ideas that I kind of went through my own life that I've applied and I put in my own work in there, my own effort, I remember every single detail of that.
And that's what it's coming down to. It's about you taking ideas, applying them as a little scientist, doing a little experiment, realizing that feedback, making sure that you are moving forward, that you are aware, that you have raised that level of awareness, so you're not that person who's just living in a daze, doesn't know what's going on.
And once you get there, that's where the magic happens. So you just have to make micro adjustments. At the end, it's all about the micro adjustments.
Right? As you're going toward the path of success, and you guys know that famous picture of success there, and then people are thinking it's a straight line, and it's like going all over the place. Well, that is a little bit true.
Right? And every time you fall off track a little bit, there's a micro adjustment that you make. And that micro adjustment, if it's based on true data that you gather through taking action, then it's gonna be a good adjustment.
If it's just a random adjustment, you can just go even further off the fat. And that's really what you're all trying to figure out, is how do I gather the right data, the data that is actually useful for me.
And once you've gathered that data, that's where success starts to happen. You wanna think of your of your of your journey like
it's almost like you you see that light at the end of the tunnel, but you also wanna think of it like a narrow road. You wanna think of success as a narrow road. So, you are walking that line of success, but you have a more focused set of behaviors than most people and you are constantly course correcting.
So, you're learning from where you up and you're taking the lesson and then course correcting again and again and again and again.
And you know who I actually kinda learned it from? It was interesting. I learned it from watching Kobe Bryant win a championship against Boston two years ago.
Because every game that the Lakers would play, whenever they would lose, they would always talk about the little lessons that they got from the loss and about how they had the ultimate vision of the championship and how they needed it to come together for the championship.
And it doesn't matter where you're at right now, what you've done in the past, or where you think you're going. You can always create a better tomorrow if you start taking action today.
So I want you to think about what is the vision? Where do you wanna be in ten years? And what's the action step you can take right now?
Again, it doesn't matter how broke or how broken you are. You can always create a better future if you start with a positive mindset right now.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The promise you keep making to yourself -- the one you break quietly, then remake the next Monday morning -- is the subject of 103 minutes of the most-quoted voices in motivational content. Absolute Motivation does not name a single speaker. By the time the first voice asks what the eight-year-old version of you would have done without hesitation, you already know this is about you.
How they asked for the click.
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