CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN 2026 - POSITIVE MORNING MOTIVATION - Start Your Day Right, Listen Every Day!

When you are struggling and when you encounter obstacles, because I guarantee you, you will, and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember something that has carried us through every moment, every moment of our lives, and that is the power of hope. The belief that something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it. There's this gap between cynicism and hope. I believe both are a choice. Hope is a choice, and for me, it was the hardest choice because I was the guy who was cynical. When I graduated college, I was 23, 40 grand in consumer debt, and I was angry at the world. I was like, I followed this path. I got good grades. I got the degree. Where's my wonderful life? Cynicism becomes the easier choice, so I think it starts with, do not be cynical, because life is so much better and richer when you choose hope. Even though it's the hard thing to do, it's the stupid, cheesy thing to do. You're drinking your own poison when you just walk around cynical towards the world. Hope is a choice. Cynicism is a choice. I hope you choose hope. Because when you're stuck and when you are on a downward spiral, whether it's just in your own head or it's in self-destructive behavior, the thing that's missing in your life is hope. What matters is, do we have that vision of hope? Do we see a possible future for us to step into that will make our lives better? What's going on in the material world is not the point. It's a side effect. For you to have any vision of hope in the future, you need to decide that something is more valuable than what you have today. If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person. A Washington, a Lincoln, King, Mandela. One person can change the world by giving people hope. When you give up hope, you stop dreaming. My friend, you stop believing. Don't you ever lose hope. Don't you ever give up your mindset. It ain't gonna be easy. Most of the time you're gonna feel like there's no way out. That you can't do it. But listen to me when I say there is always hope. You gotta stare all that in the face and say, you can't beat me. I'm too strong. If you don't have belief, if you don't have hope, if you don't have faith, you ain't got nothing. You hear what I'm telling you? Love and hope and optimism is hard. Fear and negativity and cynicism is easy and lazy. You see, you don't have to accept everything that has been handed to you. You can create the lifestyle you want. You can create the business you want, the friendships you want. It's all up to you. So there is no need for you to feel hopeless. You gotta get out of despair. And it's not the end until you've given up. And just the fact that you're here should persuade you that you have another chance to get back up. There's still hope. If you're not happy, if you don't have what you want in life, if you're exhausted, tired, stuck, the problem is the power you are unknowingly giving to other people. And other people should be one of the greatest sources of inspiration and connection and joy and love. And instead they are a constant source of stress and frustration and energy drain and they do not have to be. The let them theory is based on a simple truth. The fastest way to take control of your life is to stop controlling everyone around you. You have no idea how much time and energy and attention you are wasting trying to control other people. Thinking about, worrying about, obsessing about what other people are doing, what they're not doing, what they're feeling, all of which you have zero control over. Other people can't actually block your way. Only you can do that. And if you let people show you the way, if you let them inspire you, if you let them reveal the formula to success, now you're learning from people instead of turning people into a problem. Because success and happiness and joy and friendship and love, these are all things that are in limitless supply. And the truth about life is that you're not actually playing against other people. You're playing with them. When you spend tons of time comparing yourself to other people, and you look at other people's success or happiness or the things that they've achieved or experienced in their lives as evidence that you won't have it, you actually are working against the laws of the world. The more upset that you get about something, the faster you lose your ability to think critically. And so when you say let them, it's recognizing that there is something that happened or there is a person in your life that's doing something that's pissing you off or annoying you or stressing you out or worrying you, but you have no control over that. And so yes, react, but at some point you got to go let them because it helps you recognize and accept the reality and detach most importantly from what you can't control. I can't control what just happened. And saying let them became this lever I could pull any moment where I felt my time and attention getting sucked towards something that truly wasn't worth my time and energy or didn't matter or more importantly beyond my control. It's not about what's happening, it's about how you respond to it. And let's look at the word responsibility. It's the ability to respond. You can control how you're going to address this. You can control what you're going to do with the emotions that you feel. 95% of our decisions are made by how you feel in the moment and that is the problem. The thing that's interesting about being stuck in life is that you know what you need to do, but how do you make yourself do it when the feelings and the motivation isn't there? Because when I was lying in bed I wasn't saying to myself I should get up because that's going to help me start my day right. I was saying do I feel like getting up? It's the how. How the do you make yourself do what you need to do? That's the 100 million dollar question. So I started to develop this habit of hitting the snooze button because what would happen is the alarm would go off in the morning and the first thing I would think about is all the problems that we had and how awfully things had gone off the tracks. You didn't want to deal with them. I didn't think I could because every morning when I woke up I did not feel confident. I felt like a loser. I felt like the world's worst parent. I felt like I had failed at every single turn. I was stuck in broken patterns. Every night I would lie in bed and I would say to myself all right that's it Mel. Tomorrow it's the new you. You're going to wake up and be motivated. You're going to get up. You're going to exercise like everybody says you should. You're going to meditate. You're going to do auditions. Come on girl. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. You're I meant it when I was saying it but then I would wake up and I didn't feel any of those things. So I would hit the snooze. We make decisions of feelings like you you think that you need to feel confident or courageous in order to get started. You don't. You actually just have to start and that's the riddle of life. That lying in bed hoping that you wake up some morning motivated to change that's not the answer. You actually have to learn how to push yourself. You have to learn how to how to leverage the power of your decisions and you've got to learn how to take action when you don't feel like it. How you change your life is one five second decision at a time. One push at a time and if you if you accept the fact that you may never feel ready and you may never feel motivated and you may never feel confident you may never feel courageous and that's okay but you can still push yourself forward. What happens over time is as you start to see yourself becoming the person that takes action that you start to see yourself becoming the kind of person that speaks even though your voice is shaking. You're the kind of person that that that has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking. Guess what happens? You build the skill of confidence and courage because when you intentionally act like the person you want to become your brain sees you taking those actions so your brain starts to change the way it relates to you. That's not fake until you make it by the way. This is intentional. Intentionally act like the person you want to become. One of the hardest things which became one of the greatest realizations is truly coming face to face with myself and realizing that even though I have done all this work to heal trauma even though I have done extraordinary things in terms of my own thinking patterns that there was a level to which I was still on the run and all of this racing around kept me from having to truly stop and stand with the woman in the mirror and just be still and figure out well what do I really want? How do I really want to feel? No human being is born and hates themselves. We're actually wired for love. We're wired for connection. The fundamental flaw in human design is that when something happens to you as a kid you say what's wrong with me? We aim it back at ourselves. You know this then starts to build as a thinking pattern that there must be something wrong with me. That you aim everything that's happening out there back at yourself. But without that experience I would not be able to help the amount of people that I help. I would not be able to understand trauma as a lived experience. I would not know what I know about anxiety and be able to help people including my own children. Even when things are really hard I still believe deep in my core that through my attitude and my actions it's going to be okay. That I have within me the power to ride the ups and downs and to come out on the other side of it. And I think one of the most powerful things that you can cultivate is being able every single day to have a level of trust in your life, in the magic of things, in yourself to know that this moment right now and 5, 10, 20 years from now you will look back on this moment and you will know exactly why this happened. And why it happened is it was preparing you for something. For something extraordinary that's coming. And when you believe that it gives you the strength to face absolutely anything. You will have to become someone you've never been before. You want to go somewhere you've never gone? You got to do something you've never done. You got to say something you've never said. You got to go to a place in you that you've never even been. You get to redesign. You are your Michelangelo. You are your greatest sculpture. And you get to re-carve and you get to up-level as much as you need. You're not sentenced to this life this way. You chose it. You get to choose as much as you want. You get to design it any way you choose. You're not sentenced to your future. You have an opportunity to your future. What do you want and how do you want it? And if it doesn't make you a little afraid then you ain't playing big enough. Your knees are supposed to knock a little bit. Your teeth are supposed to chatter a little bit. There's supposed to be at least two butterflies in your stomach. At least because if not you're playing inside your comfort zone. And we mistake the fact that we're supposed to be comfortable 24-7. Well let me tell you something comfortable is equivalent to complacent. I'll choose inconvenience every day any day to make a difference on the planet. I don't mind being mildly to moderately to significantly inconvenienced to leave my fingerprint on this planet. So I just came to talk to the game changers and to the change agents who are willing to confront any part of you that's not speaking to your madly wildly amazing future. Stand here. Breathe. Own it. Own it. Ask yourself what's my dream? What's my dream? I came to challenge you to play in the field you've ever played in. I came for you to challenge the fear that might be inside of you and to redesign and reprogram it. You look at it long enough. You be with it intimately enough and it has to dissipate. You are the designer of your destiny. You are the author of your autobiography. You write the story of your life. No one can write your financial story. No one can write your spiritual story. No one can write your emotional story but you. The pen has always been in your hand. The pen has always been in your hand. I say write a story that's gonna be damn good to read and ask yourself what's my dream? What are you willing to do that you've never done before? What are you willing to say that you've never said before? Are you willing? Are you willing to do that thing you've never done before? Are you willing to stand at the edge of your own greatness? Are you willing to look at your fears? Are you willing to recognize that you can be afraid? Are you willing to look at the fact that there is always healing to come? There's always growth to come. There's no arrival. Are you willing? And then in the space of that are you still willing to lean to the edge, feel the breeze of possibility not knowing if you will fly or fall? Are you willing? Are you willing to not quite know what's there but that something is there is greater than you? Are you willing to say my life has to make a huge difference? You've heard me say this before that there's a birthday and a transition day and in between that is all the opportunity in the world. That's that dash. That dash that says are you willing to disrupt my life? You're not here. You're not put here to leave my life calm. You're here to be a disruption for my life. You're here to cause me to want to be someone I've never been, do something I've never done because you crossed my path. Are you willing to show me that way? It's going to cost you more time than you thought you'd have. It's going to cost you way more money than you thought you would invest. It's going to cost you some friends who couldn't make the entire journey with you. It's going to cost you that that sense of oh my god I gotta leave. I gotta die to the old me to allow the new me to be born to my future. It's going to cost you something. This is the year for reset. This is the year for restart. This is the year for reignite. This is the year for repeat the things that you love. This is the year for recommit. This is the year for redesign. This is the year for re-engage. This is the year for restart. This is that year. I stopped by to ignite your fire. I stopped by to have you confront fear. I stopped by to have you look at what it's cost you and to make a bold Declaration the next time it rise up you rise up a little bit higher than it I stopped by for you to no longer make fear your enemy make fear your fuel I Stopped by to redefine fear To redefine it because fear is an emotion like any other emotion fear is an emotion like love Like compassion fears and emotion. We just gave it more power We just gave it more power Compassion all that's nice fear. Whoo We made we gave it a meaning And some of you know, you've heard this before that fear is false evidence appearing real now it's time to literally Biohack the impact that fear has had That fear no longer becomes your fortress fear becomes your fuel Fear is that thing that puts you forth fear is the thing that reminds you. Oh, I need to go get more information Oh fear will keep you up at night studying fear will take you to a coach or a mentor Fear will cause you to eat a slice of humble pie Repeat after me. I am ready for my next best season Because I know That I am the author of my autobiography signer of destiny I Am writing my life story And I'm writing a life story That I'm gonna love reading And others will be inspired by On one page They'll read my fear And on the next page They'll know I did it anyway I commit to hold fear in one hand and Passion in the other and leap every time I ask that each of you hold me accountable To my contribution on this planet Turn to someone to say don't let me off the hook