IT'S TIME TO GET BACK IN THAT MODE - Motivational Speech

You're about to go to war for the first time and the enemy is all your doubts. It's all your fears and it's every back home that told you you couldn't do this. Think of that. Keep your head down. Keep moving forward. When you feel like quitting, quit tomorrow. Every morning I woke up I had a real conversation with that dirty mirror and every day the same answer came back to me. Do you want to be on your deathbed knowing that you could but you didn't? And so every day I kept saying that, I kept saying that, and before I knew it, two and a half months later, I lost the weight and I was going to Navy SEAL training. Listen, stop waiting to become the person that you know you can be. Becoming takes sacrifice, it takes discipline, and it takes intentional decisions that you should make every single day. What are you willing to sacrifice every day to become that better version of you that you know that you can be? Every single day should be an intentional move, an intentional step. Towards the goals that you are trying to reach. Just the thought of wasted potential should haunt the hell out of you because the purpose of your life is to live it to the fullest and you only have one life. You should be waking up every single day excited and eager to start the day. When you don't have that, you just don't have a plan. You can find a plan. You can make a plan. You can self-determine so much for yourself. Go through life with curiosity. Go through life with determination and you will start to discover this vision for yourself. The potential is seeing how far from where you are right now does that vision And the journey is pursuing that potential. You have nothing to lose. Make a plan. Chase that passionately. The most exhausting part of being ambitious is not the work. It's the feeling that no amount of work is ever enough. You can have an objectively good day on paper. You can get everything done. You make progress. You receive good news. And still, you go to bed feeling like you haven't done enough. Because every time you reach a goal, your expectations were The thing that you once dreamed about becomes your new normal. And suddenly, you're measuring yourself against a version of success that you couldn't even have imagined a year ago. In every situation, you should be able to say, listen, we're not going to lose. This could be bad, but we're not going to lose. I may not feel good about myself right now. But we're not going to lose. What they did may have hurt me. But we're not going to lose. Listen, if you really want something, I mean really want something, a lot of days you're going to have to shut your feelings off. Because something is going to happen every single day. Somebody may do something that bothers you. Somebody may say something that bothers you. The unexpected might just happen. But if you allow these things to poison your mind and slow you down and defeat you every time they come up, then you're going to have a hard time. It's going to come down to how bad do you really want this. And if you really want it that bad, then prepare to suffer. Prepare for this to suck. Because every single day, even if you wake up miserable, even if you wake up disgusted with the world, disgusted with people, disgusted with your state of life, you have to build a strong enough mind to find a way to work through it. To find a way to take a step in the right direction. Even if it feels unbearable to even get up that day and think about anything positive. You're going to have to be able to talk to yourself and say, I'm the one. I'm the one that can do this. You got to work yourself all the way to the point of success. You have to understand it's never going to be easy. Now listen to me. When you were younger, you had dreams. But you got married and had a couple of kids. And now you're like, well, that dream is dead. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. You're not done yet, and you just may need to be a little bit flexible and a little patient. Not now does not mean not ever, and not this way does not mean not at all. Don't give up on your dream. And I made a promise to myself on that day that I was going to work that hard every single day so that when I do retire, I have no regrets. And that was the most important thing for me is to leave no stone unturned, get better every single day. And if I lived that way, then over time, you know, I'd have something that was beautiful. That was my philosophy. It seems like a pretty simple one, but you know, if you live your life to just get better every single day, and you do that for 20 years, what do you have? Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. What we most fear doing, asking, saying, These are very often exactly what we most need to do. It's okay to be unbalanced for a while. It's okay. Don't be all this stuff people say. You gotta be balanced to be the best in the world at what you do. You have to be unbalanced to find every bit of energy and strength that you have to pull it off. Then you get balanced once you become great. And it takes being obsessed to where people think you're crazy. Y'all gotta start loving your life, be comfortable in who you are. If you come from a family right now that's broke, use that to your advantage. I use that to my advantage that I was a high school dropout, that I was homeless. I love dealing with a dude who think because he come from money, he better than me. Let's go. Let's go. You got money, but do you got that dog? When you can be happy in the midst of hardship, then you see the true potential of the mind. When you can't control what's happening, control how you respond to it. That's where your power is. Control what you can control. It's Thoreau's quote, that most men live lives of quiet desperation. It's one of my favorite quotes ever because it's true. I've been that guy. You're just in this world where you just can't wait to just run away. That's the only way you ever get where you want to go. You have to take a path that's dangerous, and most people want to take the safe path. The safe path leaves you stuck in quiet desperation. You start to become civilized. The refrigerator gets full. You start making money and you start, I'm not getting cold anymore, I'm retired, because I'm not allowing myself to become civilized. The worst thing that can happen to a man is become civilized. You lose that, you fight, you lose that. Why the am I doing it? I'm good. You ain't good, man. You ain't never ******* arrived. And that's just my mentality. You may have more, but you never gonna arrive. You wanna be uncommon amongst uncommon people. I can control my attitude, I can control my words, I can control my perspective, I can control the lens in which I see, because if I can control what I can control in the moment, what's happening externally is not gonna affect and impact my true potential and my true advancement as a person. These people that you're comparing yourself to, you don't really know. You see their shiny outside, but you don't see the reality of their life. People have hard lives, and the ideal that you're observing that makes you jealous and resentful is in large part an illusion that's created by your own mind. I'm talking about real commitment, not that cheap stuff, right? Not that counterfeit stuff, not that if I get what I want stuff, not that little boy stuff. I'm talking concrete commitment. The commitment that says, can I stay true to what I said I would do long after the mood that I've said it has left. It's easy to say what you're going to do when you're sitting in these plush seats, this AC, and you've got the words on the wall. Come to the realization very clearly that you've f***ed up and you've got yourself stuck. So whatever you're doing, you have to... Do it like your life depends on it. Whatever time you have, you have to attack like you're trying to save the world. You're trying to save your life. You don't want to drown. You got to go. You got to get after it. And you got to have discipline. Most people don't have those things. Most people don't understand what it's like to really go for something. And to know that the consequences of not doing that are horrific. Life isn't fair. That's the reality. And A good person in the wrong place, in the wrong time can end up just a victim of fate. But when those bad things happen to people around you, what are you going to do? How are you going to lead? Are you going to fall over, fall down, fall apart? Or are you going to lead? Never give up. Never, never give up. I think that more than anything else from every study I've read, that's critical. If you resolve in advance that once you're set off to achieve your goal, you will never give up, but you will never quit. Nothing can stop you. That every single difficulty will just be a spur to drive you on. That you will become an inverse paranoid and you'll look into every problem and you'll look for the good in the problem. You'll look for the lesson that you can learn. You'll look for the way you can turn the situation to your advantage. If you keep on doing that, if you keep optimistic, if you keep this attitude of confident expectation going, you will be successful. Your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself. And every time you persist in the face of adversity, Your belief in yourself increases until it reaches the point where you become unstoppable on the pathway to your goal. I'm standing here right now in front of you. Judge me. I'm proud of every inch. I'm proud of every second. Do I have flaws? Yes. Do I work on them once identified? Yes. Am I constantly trying to improve the mental state, the IPO value of my name? Yes, I am. The small things mean as much to me as the large things. Because those small things add up to be more and more and more. They create the big thing. You know, the big thing isn't just one. It's trained for, it's fought for. In the training, in the gym. You know, in those moments of character testing. Of morality, integrity. That everyone seems to fail these days. Who stands up, picks up the trash when no one's looking? Who does that? The same person that's on top of the podium later in life. They go hand in hand. It's a heartbeat guys at the end. That really wins it. At the top of this level of competition, everyone's got a talent. Everyone's got the perseverance. Everyone has it all. And everyone wants it. But somebody wants it more. Someone's heartbeat is constantly beating for it. Not just when people are watching, not just in training, but when they're sleeping or dreaming of it. It's a constant cycle. How do you know when you're on the right path? When the small nuances in life that people don't really value, they consider a nuisance, you consider them as valuable as the big events when everyone is watching. Your potential is determined by how much uncertainty you're willing to embrace. When you're built different than everybody else and you have this desire for more and this desire for achievement and this desire to win, everybody else looks at you like you're something dumb. When people don't understand you anymore, you're in that spot. Of obsession and drive. Where people are like, what the **** is wrong with this guy? I don't want to talk to you, man, because you're not going to get it. You will never understand what is wrong with me. And that's why I'm so glad you don't. Because I'm in the right ******* spot. And they'll tell you that, too. You know, what's wrong with you? Like, why can't you just relax? Why can't you just do this? Why can't, because I'm just not built that way, man. Has the alcohol worked yet, or do you still wake up the next day with the same pain that needs to be swept under the rug even harder? Did the drink turn you into that better version of yourself yet, or does your personality still require that liquid confidence every time just to come alive? I suppose if drinking is your source of fun, a good time is defined by escaping yourself, even if just a little bit. It doesn't seem that gratifying to me. You know, if you wanted to feel good without the poison, you definitely can, and a lot of people do it, but there's a heavy pressure of normalcy to break through. You're ever going to find them and do the same. Whether you like it or not, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, a lot of us are at war with ourselves. And within that war, you have several battles. Those battles are basically choices. No, I'm not talking about a war where you might find the Colosseum. I'm talking about a war that's in your brain. That war exists because life has so many choices. Within those choices, you got to make right decisions. You know what? When your alarm goes off in the morning, you have to wake up. Don't wake up, don't worry about that. When you're in school, you don't f*** that man. It's too hard to step. So don't study. You know what? Don't eat healthy, because you don't have to. So guess what? When you fail, don't blame your mom. Don't blame your dad. Don't blame teachers. The one who pushed you to the plane is yourself. Never apologize for being obsessed. They'll call it too much. Let them. Positive obsession isn't a flaw. It's the edge that separates good from great. The one that cuts through excuses, distractions, and mediocrity. The world might call it too much, but they're just uncomfortable with the level of focus that they don't have. So go ahead, obsess over growth. Obsess over your goals. Obsess over becoming the best version of you. Nobody else at the moment has the power to change you. Unless you have that initial spark and say, I must do something. I don't want this anymore. In order for something new to come, something old must go. Let go of what you know until now. Empty the cup. Start from the beginning. You must spill the old tea and pour in new one. Then things look different. You got to want the best out of your life because we only have a moment. Believe is what? If you're in a spot and you don't know what to do and you're not sure where to go and you don't know where the right direction is, start walking. And start looking for opportunities, and they'll show up. Stop holding on to what someone did to you in the past. It's holding you prisoner. And because you're a prisoner, you think that everyone else is a warden trying to hold you back or hold you down. They're not. Release that so that you can be free. And because a freedman celebrates, a freedman realizes that he's no longer a slave, he is no longer bound, he is no longer limited, he no longer needs validation. You be free. Because when you find yourself free, you can hop a reef without guilt. The moment that you start something, you will start, paths will start to clear up. And you might not know what's going to happen or how it's going to happen, but I promise you, if you pick that thing that you love, I'm talking about you really love, I'm talking about that thing that you would do for free. If you pick that, if you pick that every day, if you choose that every day, consistently, It's inevitable for you not to be successful. And those kids got to understand you got to stay true to yourself. You got to have the ability to think for yourself and know that sometimes you're going to have to be a man before you become one. How much did they first pay you to give up like 27 grand a year? And when were you going to stop and come back and do what Misha had? I see guys who work at the same company for their entire lives. Guys exactly like you. Clock in, they clock out, and they never have the moment. You have an opportunity. This is a rebirth. I think having a purpose is that thing that makes us tick, that gets us up every day and gets us over the hump of opposition and adversity. And the reason that I champion adversity and opposition is because I think for the most part in life, people pretty much know what to do when things go right, right? Like when things go right, they know how to feel, they know how to act, how to react. But it's when that opposition and that adversity comes and it creates a level of misunderstanding. Now the vision is blurred. Now you don't have clarity about what you're supposed to do. Now you question if your existence matters. And I think when you have a purpose, it's powerful because in the midst of the opposition, it makes you realize that you've been put here for a certain reason. You make yourself more than just a man if you devote yourself to an idea. And if they can't stop you, then you become something else entirely. Legend is still here. This year, you can't fear change. In one of the beautiful passages in meditation, Marcus Ruiz reminds himself that everything in life comes from change, good and bad. By trying to keep things the same, not only are you, of course, focused on something that you don't control, but you are preventing yourself from all the wonderful opportunities that exist that could come your way. We live in a time of disruption. We live in a time of institutions that are falling apart. We live in a time of innovation, new institutions that are being created, so you can't, Fear what's gonna come of that, the Stokes would say. All you could focus on this year is embracing those things, adapting yourself to change, acquiescing to that change, rather than fighting it, rather than fearing it, rather than resenting it. Because it's gonna happen regardless of how you feel about it. So what you should focus on, the Stokes would say, is what you're going to do about it. Life is hard on the good days when you expect so much of yourself. And when the bad days come around, keeping the promises feels almost impossible. I wish I could explain to you the pit in my stomach in those moments, but I'm not sure I have the right words, to be honest. Somehow I always see the other side of the promise kept, though, and the difficult part is that it doesn't provide the relief you'd hope it would. My only consolation at times is that I know I did the right thing to maintain who I am, because that is the one thing I cannot let myself lose. I can't remember to be frustrated, because now I keep on failing. Years almost over. It's been a tough year, right? But we're not going to talk about that right now. This is for making it through this tough year. There's been a lot of good and bad, but I'm happy that you've made it this far and that you're still here. Thank you for hanging in there, and I'm proud of you for staying strong. If you wish to be the king of the jungle, it's not enough to act like a king. You must be the king. There can be no doubt, because doubt causes chaos in one's own good mind. Start something you believe in. and give it everything you have not for the applause not for the outcome but because it's yours focus on the work let it consume you take small steps every day and watch how they compound what feels impossible now becomes inevitable over time forget perfection forget shortcuts mastery lives in repetition and the timeline for greatness is a lifetime patience and you come out the other side and you realize How much you grew through that, you start becoming grateful, right? One, you become grateful for what you just went through. You become grateful for the past experiences, but also you become grateful for when you are going through tough situations in the future because you understand that literally the situation and the season I'm in right now is developing me in a certain way that maybe I can't see right now, but I know that if I keep showing up, keep taking it day by day, step by step, moment by moment, I'm going to come out a better version of myself. Man, I'm grateful for that. There's a quiet kind of pain in starting over. It feels like failure, like all the effort, all the time, all the dreams you poured into something have been erased. Like you're back at square one, staring at the wreckage of what could have been. Starting over isn't just hard, it's humbling. It forces you to face everything you thought you'd left behind. Your fears, your doubts, and the heavy weight of regret. But here's the thing, starting over isn't the end, it's the beginning. It doesn't feel like that though, does it? When the dust hasn't settled, and all you can see is what you've lost, it's hard to imagine that this could be the start of something better, something stronger, something worth all the pain. And yet, that's exactly what it is. You see, life isn't linear. It's not a straight path from point A to point B. It's messy. It's filled with detours, dead ends, and moments where you have to stop, turn around, and begin again. And that's not failure. That's life. The people who never start over. The ones who cling to what's broken because they're too afraid to begin again. They're the ones who stay stuck. They're the ones who never grow, never change, never find out what's waiting for them on the other side of the storm. Starting over is an act of courage. It's standing in the ruins of what you thought your life would be and saying, this isn't where it ends, this is where it begins. It's choosing to believe that no matter how many times you've fallen, no matter how many times you've failed, you still have something left in you, something worth fighting for. And here's the truth. Starting over doesn't mean erasing everything that came before. It doesn't mean forgetting the lessons, the strength, the resilience you've built along the way. It means taking those things, those hard-earned truths, and using them as the foundation for what comes next. Because every time you start over, you're not starting from scratch. You're starting from experience. And that makes all the difference. Think about a tree that's been cut down. On the surface, it looks like the end. The trunk is gone. The branches are gone. The leaves are gone. But deep beneath the soil, the roots remain. And those roots are still alive, still strong, still capable of growing something new. That's you. No matter how many times life has cut you down, your roots are still there. And from those roots, you can rebuild. You can grow. You can rise. But rebuilding takes time. It takes patience. And most of all, it takes faith. Faith in yourself. Faith in the process. Faith that even though you can't see the end yet, it's worth the work. And it is worth it. Starting over means showing up, every day, even when it feels like nothing is happening, even when it feels like you're getting nowhere. It means planting the seeds of your future self, watering them with your effort, and trusting that, eventually, they'll grow. And they will grow, because that's what life does. It grows, even in the face of loss, even in the face of failure, even in the face of uncertainty. Life has a way of finding a path forward, of creating something new from the ashes of what was. And you are no different. You are life. You are growth. You are the possibility of what comes next. Starting over also requires something else. The ability to forgive yourself. To let go of the mistakes you've made. The opportunities you've missed. The times you've fallen short. You're not perfect. You never will be. And that's okay. Perfection isn't the goal. Growth is. Progress is. Becoming a little bit stronger. A little bit wiser. A little bit more yourself every day. That's the goal. So if you're standing at the edge of a new beginning, unsure of whether you have the strength to start again, Let me tell you this. You do. You've already survived the worst. You've already faced the pain, the heartbreak, the loss. And you're still here. That means you're stronger than you think. That means you're capable of more than you know. And when you start again, when you take that first step, it's not going to feel monumental. It's not going to feel like a movie montage where everything suddenly falls into place. It's going to feel small, quiet, maybe even insignificant. But that first step, it's everything. Because it's proof that you're not done yet. It's proof that you're willing to try. And that willingness, that's where transformation begins. Starting over doesn't mean you failed. It means you're brave enough to keep going. It means you're willing to leave behind what no longer serves you. To let go of the life you thought you wanted so you can create the life you're meant to live. And that life, it's out there, waiting for you. Waiting for you to take the steps, to put in the work, to believe in yourself enough to try. One day you're gonna look back at this quiet season, and you're gonna realize that it saved you. It saved you from attachments that would've drained you, from paths that weren't meant for you, from versions of yourself that were built for survival, not purpose. Loneliness teaches you how to sit with discomfort without escaping it, how to find peace without constant distraction. And once you learn that, you stop begging for company that cost you your peace, You stop forcing connections that don't feel aligned. You stop confusing attention for love. This season isn't here to break you. It's here to refine you. So don't rush it. Don't fight it. And don't shame yourself for it. Some of the most important transformations only happen in silence. If you are losing the fire inside of you, life is over. So what do you need in order to live like life? We need fire. This fire only comes when we are using willpower. And the more you have this, the more internally it starts to generate this heat, this vitality. It is that vitality that makes you then push through things even if it will become hard one day. I was forced to go only internal. External had to go away. The external world had to go away. And living so deep inside myself, it was me in this brain and figuring out how this thing works. Brother, you're silently holding it together, carrying a weight without complaining, showing up when no one knows the cost. And then you wonder if anyone sees it or if it even matters. It does. Because a man that keeps walking is a man that God can trust. Keep going. Instead of huge steps, what we are using as a method is continuity. Repetition is your friend, not huge jumping. It is the repetition of things that starts to embody something inside of you. Use the word destiny over and over throughout the book. What does that mean to you? It's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have on your mind of what you're about will come true. It's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, somebody will kill it. So it's best to keep that all inside. Revisit your dream, you know, it doesn't cost anything to dream and our dreams need auditing as you go into this next year Shouldn't just be doubling down on the same dream Really take some time and evaluate your real purpose. D.O. Moody said, our greatest fear should not be that we fail. Our greatest fear should be that we succeed at something that doesn't matter. And so if you really believe what you're doing matters, it gives you a peace through turmoil, through difficulty, through ups and downs. If I fail in the attempt to do something that matters, I can live with that. I said to myself, if ever I want anything to change, it's up to me. That's the time where I really got scared. It suddenly hit me right between the eyes that if I wanted my life to be different, it was up to me to make my life different. And if I can get only one point across to you in this... The simple segment, this little segment is this, is that the starting point of flying to the stars, the starting point of taking complete charge of your life, the starting point of great success and great achievement is to accept complete, unconditional responsibility. If it's to me, it's up to me. If it's to me, it's up. As Henry Ford said, never complain, never explain. What that means is if you don't like the way things are, then it's up to you to change them. And if you're not willing to take steps to change them, then don't complain about them. Just simply accept them. Men who are men and women who are women don't complain about the difficulties of life. They just accept them as the difficulties of life. And they either do something about them or they don't say anything. So if it's to be, it's up to me. If it's to be, it's up to you. Most people just don't want to be responsible for their existence. The predominant state of mind is a victim. I say it with all the compassion in the world, but people really think that I am at the effect of life. And for most people, it's really justified. Like, if you knew my dad, he was an asshole, and you knew my spouse, she's a bitch. And there's just the absence of both accountability, responsibility, and personal power that, for whatever reasons, I've attracted these circumstances for my own growth and evolution. I know who you are because you're the same person in adversity, in victory, in defeat. You're the same mother. It doesn't get turned off ever. Excellence, I said before, guys, is not an accident in somebody's life. It's an habitual habit that's trained and perfected and then remastered and remastered every single day. And everything they do, you know you're on the right path. When these small things, the momentum builders, hold value to yourself. When you stamp your name on something and it means something, come check it out, I did this. I'm not hoping someone doesn't see it. The fact you know it exists is enough. Amen. Look, this is what you got to do, bro. Wake up and grind. Wake up and grind. Wake up and grind. Every day. That's the method. I mean, it's not hard. If you get up every single day and put your mind to something, how could you really believe that you won't win? It's not possible. I mean, 99% of people already don't want to grind. So you just start and you're becoming a 1%. This junk is really simple, but you're making it hard. When all you have to do is wake up and grind every day. That's the method. Stop ignoring the voice in your head. You know the one I'm talking about, the one that knows you're capable of more, the one that whispers to you at night that you could have gone harder. What if I told you that voice is your potential, daring you to do more, be more, go bigger, do better. Don't ignore your potential, feed it. Because I'll be honest with you, I am sick of people telling me to rest more, take a break, seek balance. off if you are blessed with the opportunity to chase your dreams and whatever weird disposition leads someone to run after them with unwavering desire then f***ing do it and apologize to no one. The number one way to make people mad is to treat yourself like gold. Keep all your promises. Skip out on all the popularity contests and selling your soul to be on the same page as everyone. Leave the beer smoking and meaningless relationships to those that can't see through the BS. And they'll be angry at you. Is it because you're doing something wrong? No. I think your only crime is making them witness a life they wish they could have but never will. People want to blame the mirror for what they see in it. But in all reality, the mirror provides nothing but the reflection of a harsh truth. And I tell people, if you have found the right path and you feel frustrated and you feel blocked... That's a good thing, right? That little bit of pain, a little bit of frustration, it's often the signal that you're actually on the verge of turning into the right direction. You know, this is a signal that things aren't quite working out and you're listening to it. But if you get anxious and you don't listen to the frustration and you can't be creative, you can't go into it. But you'll learn at a much higher rate, and you'll enjoy. Everything involves a degree of pain, a degree of practice, a degree of drudgery. There's nothing that's going to come easy in life. So anything, a skill that you're going to learn, it's going to involve that. And if you're not connected to it in a deep way, you're never going to learn fast enough, you know, and you're just going to burn out too early. Live in the moment. So I'm trying to be alive and start live being. Death is coming. When it comes, are you ready for it? Are you going to stand up and dance to that ******* celebration? Or are you going to be wishing, oh my God, because that's permanent, man. You can't change it. You can't reverse the clock trying to make man's and do it right. You don't have time to say you're sorry and make it right. No, it's the other way. That day calls. It's like sending for a test. That day is going to be tested. Do you pass or fail? It's a huge accountability of today. We come into this world by ourselves. We leave this world by ourselves. We have the opportunity to engage while here, but we leave alone. We leave with the memories and the embraces and the love and the experiences of life. We take that with us. And if we do it right, we leave footprints of legacy and motivation for others to follow and take the most out of life, alive, but also living, not so fearful for death, that we become a self-paralysis in our own state, trying to preserve the inevitable. It doesn't work that way, guys. Consistency isn't sexy, but the magic just doesn't happen overnight. It's in the small steps you take every day. The ones that feel repetitive, unnoticed, and even dull. Don't underestimate what you're doing right now. It's turning effort into momentum, and momentum into results. So keep going, because consistency doesn't just win, it changes everything. Imagine that you're in a movie. And imagine the movie begins now, and you're the hero of the movie. What would that guy do? What would that guy do right now? Because you are. People struggle to do things a lot, and the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people. Don't let other people tell you what you can and can't do. If you feel like you should do it, go for it. Life's not perfect. Not everything has to work out, but the window of opportunity is getting smaller every day. Nobody sees the world like you see it. So just do what feels right today and worry about the rest tomorrow. We all get exactly the same amount of time. Exactly. And here's something interesting. The sand in the bottom of the glass represents the past. The sand on the top of the glass represents the future. You have no idea what's in the top of the glass. You only know what's in the bottom of the glass. The only thing we've got anything to do with is what's right here in the center right now. Everything else is an illusion. It's a myth. It's God. If we want to enjoy more of life, we've got to give everything we've got right now. It's not what happens that determines your future. It's what you do about what happens. Direction determines destination. When you make mistakes, they add up. They add up. One mistake compounds and leads to another, which leads to another. And they can lead you to a downward spiral of destruction. Here's the thing. You know what else adds up? Positive things. Good moves. The small sacrifices that you make to do things right. So put in the daily effort. Let that be your reward. Reward yourself. Feel gratification from knowing that you moved the needle even just a little bit. And whatever it is you want to do isn't going to happen in one day. You have work to do. You cannot change your life unless you go inside first, you figure out who you are, what your own wisdom is telling you to do, and you start to actually believe it and follow it. I think when you're on the start path, you can't look at the outcome as the only positive because you will never make it. The positive frame that I've always used is thinking about who I was becoming as the asset that I was building. So in real time, whenever I finished a long day's work, I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for five years without reward. And that would be part of the story I would someday tell. Let's say you want something really bad and you keep trying and you keep trying and you keep trying and on the 10th try you don't get it still and then you say, ah, okay, there must be a sign that I need to stop doing what I need to do. But what if you didn't know that on your 11th try you would have made it? You would have made it happen and got what you wanted to get. So I feel like persistence is important because if you really truly love something and you truly believe, you should just do it for the love and if you don't get to where you're going, you're still doing something you love. Visualize it. But also feel it. Like feel yourself there. Close your eyes, smile to yourself and feel yourself there. And believe me when I say you can manifest that. There's probably like five things I could do today so that tomorrow morning is slightly better than this morning was. At least or at least I'm not falling behind. It's not going to be something you want to do. There'll be things you're trying to avoid. They're snakes essentially. If you ask yourself, instead of telling yourself, you know, what is it that I could do to set things more right today? Then you can go do it. And then you put the world together a little more. You also construct yourself into something that's better able to call order forth from chaos. And that makes you just incrementally stronger. How can a trial, how can a struggle, how can that hard time, how is that building my life? Right? Just because the path isn't perfect doesn't mean the purpose of the path isn't perfect for your life. A lot of times we have to go through trials in order to gain the strength. A lot of times we have to go through hard times in order to build our strongest faith. I think people give up because they don't believe what they see. People don't believe the greatness that's in them. Because the world created this superstar elite group that's just human, just like us. But when we see them on television, we look at them as higher than us. We look at them in a place where we think we can never get to and the real reason is most people never get off the stands and get in the game. They stay fans their whole life. So I tell everybody get off the stands and get in the game. Get in the game of life and leave your mark here. Every human being on this earth has their own journey and when you don't focus on yours you will not bring the great gifts and things that you were supposed to bring to the world. When you're in the mirror in the morning, don't just give affirmations. Give yourself accountability. Give yourself the truth. Today, I will be honest in all my dealings. Today, I will confront those who have done me wrong in a mature and professional way. While you can either lift up a cross or have one dropped on, you need something beyond that. Why? Because life in some ways is unbearable. And so you need something worth bearing. to make it bearable and life is very heavy load and so that means you have to carry something very heavy to justify it. Like the best gift comes from the bottom. Like only in the womb of a woman can a man breathe underwater. Like God leaves you a gift at the bottom of the stairs and it's up to you to climb up those stairs and get your gift. Change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change. What you realize is a lot of the things that you feared or hated or embarrassed about as a child end up being the genesis of the things that you're most proud about as an adult. You care for what you aim at. What you aim at determines the way the world manifests itself to you and so if the world is manifesting itself in a very negative way one thing to ask is are you aiming at the right thing? So many people are suffering in comfort meaning they're constantly trying to add things even though they're suffering in their life. Prison of our minds, the prison of the emotions we don't want to feel, the prison of feeling like we're less, the prison of feeling like my life doesn't matter, the prison of not having a sense of direction, the prison of feeling invisible. And I believe suffering comes from a place in our life where we're not pursuing our dreams, we're not pursuing our potential. I guarantee that there are people that have been sitting on an idea for more than a decade, sitting on a dream for over 10 years. And that's horrible. That's where dreams die. That's where ideas die. That's where projects die. So write down the top three things you need to do. And then you go do those three things. Imagine if you wrote down the three things you need to do tomorrow. And then tomorrow you woke up and you did them. And then imagine if you did that for five years. Where would you be in life? You've got to quit negotiating the price right now, make the decision that any price is worth it as long as it's legal, ethical and moral for you to make your family proud of you, for you to make your dream happen. Stop negotiating the price. This negotiation you keep doing in your mind. Is this really what I'm supposed to be? This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Steals all your energy. It steals your focus. But those of you that get laser focused become totally immersed in your dream that know those babies of yours, your parents. Guess what? They're worth the sacrifice. You spend the rest of your life worrying about what everybody thinks about you, someday you'll never have to worry about it again, because when you die, nobody will remember you were here. You lose friends. Well, you're going to lose the friends who don't want the best for you. Those are the friends you want in ten years? I mean, you lose friends. Well, maybe you gain new friends. Maybe you gain better friends. Or maybe, miracle of miracles, your friends pick up their mess too and move forward, but... You have to contemplate the price you pay for inaction. It excites me. I think that's the difference is that when I have self-doubt, it excites me because it's like, okay, well, you know, this is a challenge. You know, let's see. Let's see. I don't know if I can do it or not, but I'm going to find out. What can happen if we decide that? I'm going to see what happens when I decide that I am qualified. What happens when I decide for myself that I'm going to do something different? Even when it's cold outside, even when it's raining, even when it's just too difficult to get out of bed, the person that has the ability to get up and stay focused and consistent is a disappointed ************. Change isn't for those who need it. It's for those who want it. Translation. It's all about willingness. Willingness born out of a desire to survive, I suppose, but also pain. You don't have to be in pain to change. You don't have to hit rock bottom in order to make alterations to your life. Change is always within your grasp if you can summon the willingness that has for it. Stop worrying about what these people think about you. Live your dream. Worry about the people you love. By the way, I know some of the very people you're doing it for are the ones not supporting you. They're the ones telling you to quit. Just do it anyway. I want to tell you this. What you focus on is what you will feel. If you change your focus, you will change what you feel, and it will change your life. You're in this job you hate, and it's ten years from now. How does that look? Think about that. You already know you're in a little hell. You know perfectly well it's going to get worse. Which is more frightening, action or inaction? My brain can feel a certain way, but it's not going to choose how I behave all the time. I just can't let it do it anymore. I'm going to have setbacks, I know. But if I'm feeling bad, that doesn't mean I'm doing bad. That doesn't mean I am bad. That doesn't mean that I can't still take some action. Because, yeah, nothing changes if nothing changes, man. That in order for something to change, there needs to be change. Allow yourself to be more open and more vulnerable because what is hidden cannot be healed. It is in the light and the sharing and the trust and the vulnerability that together we get better. And we will fight and in fighting we will win and if not the battle and if not the war we will win because our spirit it will never surrender and that Is the ultimate victory to hold your head high and even even in the face of inescapable defeat stand and to fight is to win. Bad things are happening. I am going to try and be the one good thing.