Daily Motivations - DON'T WAIT TO BE GREAT

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

"Happy Holidays, dear listeners! Wishing you joy, warmth, and wonderful moments this Christmas. Thank you for being part of our journey—here's to a bright and inspiring New Year!" Don't Wait To Be Great! This is a powerful Motivational Speech Video on working hard, pushing yourself, striving to be your best, making it happen, and never giving up even when things get hard! Speakers: Chadwick Boseman Brian Bullock Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Speech Credit Jürgen Höller - Power Days (Olympiahalle Munich) Mark Cuban Marcus "Elevation" Taylor Neil deGrasse Tyson Jordan Peterson Nathan Harmon

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So many people are waiting. You're waiting for things to be perfect. You're waiting for everyone to get themselves together. Imagine you read one hour a day about history. How much you will learn after 365 hours in one year. Think about if you study about the history of musicians, of composers. How much you would know. You went to IU, right? Now, you've got a lot of people that say, forget about school, you know, drop out of

school. They're idiots. So you think they're idiots? They're idiots. I bet most of your people who've sat in this chair, it's not about what college they went to. It's about their own initiative, their own drive, their own ambitions, their own curiosity. Purpose is an essential element of you.

It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. You're waiting for someone to give you the opportunity. You're waiting for everything to line up. You're waiting for all the situations to come together perfectly. And I'm telling you, you cannot wait. You got to start working right now whatever you choose for a career path remember the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose your life matters your voice matters your name matters sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the

real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you. Imagine you read one hour a day about history. How much you will learn after 365 hours in one year. Think about if you study about the history of musicians, of composers, how much you would know. Imagine if you will work on the business and some business that you want to develop every day for an hour. Imagine how further along you will go and get. So it drives me nuts because we have, when people say we don't have the time we have 24 hours a day. We sleep six hours a day so that gives you still 18 hours. There's someone shaking their head out here in front to say probably,

I don't sleep six hours, I sleep eight hours, right? But just sleep faster. So we have 18 hours a day. The average person works around eight to 10 hours. So let's assume it's 10 hours, so we have 18 hours a day. The average person works around 8 to 10 hours. So let's assume it's 10 hours. So we have 8 hours left. Then you travel around an hour a day. Maybe 2 hours a day.

So now you have still 6 hours left. So what do you do with these 6 hours? What do you do with these 6 hours? Then we eat a little bit. Then we schmooze a little bit, talk a little bit to people and all that stuff. But you can see how much time there is available if you organize your day. So you got to work hard. I mean let me tell you something, when went to America I went to college I went and worked out

five hours a day and I was working on construction because in those days in bodybuilding there was no money we didn't I didn't have the money for food supplements or anything. So I had to go to work. So I worked in construction. I went to college. I worked out in the gym and at night from eight o'clock at night to 12 midnight, I went to acting class four times a week. So I did all that. There was not one single minute that I wasted. And this is why I'm standing here today. Now is the time to start building your marriage. Now is the time to start teaching and investing in your kids. Now is the time to start building your marriage. Now is the time to start teaching and investing in your kids.

Now is the time to start piecing your money together and getting yourself out of debt. Now is the time to start pursuing something greater. Now is the time to start building the vision that God put in your heart. Now is the time to start saving up for the home. Now is the time to start making those investments in yourself you cannot wait don't wait another day don't wait another minute don't wait another moment now is your time how long are you gonna complain about what you don't have how long are you gonna complain about who didn't do it who didn't take care of you and who didn't call you and who don't like you and what they said what they think who cares what they

think who cares what they said this is not about them this is about me this is about what God wants to do with me this is about the legacy that he wants me to build. This is about the impact he wants me to make. Why am I going to put my legacy to the side in order to appease a person who don't know who I really am?

You got to get to a place where you recognize that I'm not just here passing time. I'm not just here just having fun, but I'm here to build legacy. I'm here to make things happen. I'm here to change the world. Now is your time. My experience is with people that we're probably running at about 51% of our capacity. I mean, you can think about this yourselves. I often ask undergraduates, how many hours a day you waste,

or how many hours a week you waste, and the classic answer is something like four to six hours a day. You know, inefficient studying, watching things on YouTube that not only do you not wanna watch, that you don't even care about, that make you feel horrible about watching after you're done,

that's probably four hours right there. You know, well that's 20-25 hours a week it's 100 hours a month that's two and a half full work weeks it's half a year of work weeks per year and if your time is worth twenty dollars an hour which is a radical underestimate it's probably more like 50 if you think about it in terms of deferred wages if you're wasting 20 hours a week you're wasting fifty thousand dollars a year and you are doing that right now and it's because you're young wasting fifty thousand dollars a year is a way bigger catastrophe than it would be for me to waste it because i'm not going to last nearly as long and so if your life isn't everything it could be you could ask yourself well what would happen if you just stopped wasting the opportunities that are in front of you you'd be who knows how much more efficient 10 times more

efficient 20 times more efficient that's the Pareto distribution you have no idea how efficient efficient people get it's completely it's off the charts best thing you can do is teach people to write. Because there's no difference between that and thinking. And one of the things that just blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something. It's like, well, you have to do this assignment. Well, why are you writing? Well, you need the grade. It's like, no. you have to do this assignment. Well, why are you writing? Well, you need the grade.

It's like, no, you need to learn to think. Because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake. And those could be battles for good things. If you can think and speak and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that's why you learn to write. It's like,

I can't believe that people aren't just told that. It's like, it's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with. And I mean, I know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful and watched them throughout my life. I mean, those people,

you don't want to have an argument with them. They'll just slash you into pieces. and not in a malevolent way. It's like, if you're going to make your point and they're going to make their point, you better have your points organized because otherwise you are going to look like and be an absolute idiot. You are not going to get anywhere. And if you can formulate your arguments coherently and make a presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal, God, people give you money, they give you opportunities, you have influence. Make it a schedule and stick to it.

Okay, so what's the rule with a schedule? It's not a bloody prison. That's the first thing that people do wrong. They say, well, I don't like to follow a schedule. It's like, well, what kind of schedule are you setting up? Well, I have to do this, then I have to do this, then I have to do this, you know, and then I just go play video games because who wants to do all these things that I have to do? It's like wrong. Set the schedule up so that you have the day you want. That's the trick. It's like, okay, I've got tomorrow. If I was going to set it up so it was the the day you want. That's the trick. It's like, okay, I've got

tomorrow. If I was going to set it up so it was the best possible day I could have, practically speaking, what would it look like? Well, then you schedule that. And obviously, there's a bit of responsibility that's going to go along with that. Because if you have any sense, one of the things that you're going to insist upon is that at the end of the day, you're not in worse shape than you were at the beginning of the day, right? Because that's a stupid day. If you have a bunch of those in a row, you just dig yourself a hole, and then you bury yourself in it.

It's like, sorry, that's just not a good strategy. It's a bad strategy. So maybe 20% of your day has to be responsibility and obligation, or maybe it's more than that, depending on how far behind you are. But even that, you can ask yourself, okay, well, I've got these responsibilities. I have to schedule the things in. What's the right ratio of responsibility to reward?

And you can ask yourself that, just like you'd negotiate with someone who is working for you. It's like, okay, you got to work tomorrow. Okay, so I want you to work tomorrow. And you might say, okay, well, what are you going to do for me? That makes it likely that I'll work for you. Well, you could ask yourself that, you know, maybe you do an hour of responsibility, and then you play a video game for 15 minutes. I don't know whatever turns your crank, man. But, you know, you have to negotiate with yourself and not tyrannize yourself. Like you're negotiating

with someone that you care for that you would like to be productive and have a good life and and that's how you make the schedule it's like and then you look at the day and you think well if i had that day that'd be good great you know and you you're useless and horrible so you'll probably only hit it with about 70 accuracy but that beats the hell out of zero right and if you hit it even with 50 accuracy another rule is well aim for 51 the next week or 50 and a half percent for god's sake or because you're you're going to hit that position where things start to loop back positively and spiral On my tombstone, I want the epitaph, be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for humanity. Many people look for meaning in life as though it's going to be under a rock or behind a tree.

Well, there's my meaning. You have more power than that. You have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it meaning to me is do I know more about the world today than I did yesterday that enhances meaning for me and if that accumulates and accrues daily, in a month you know way more than you did than just that day later, so that you continue to grow. My first question of me wasn't, where do I find meaning? It was, how do I create meaning? And that started early, early teens. You can draw a line in the sand between people who transgress, but do not hold power over you.

There's a famous quote from Martin Luther King, you can only be ridden if your back is bent. When I grew up it was very common to hear the phrase sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me. I haven't heard that phrase in a long time. I don't hear it recited in the elementary schools. What I think has happened over the years is we came to learn as a civilization that words can be hurtful. That's an advance in mental health. What I see on the flip side of that coin, however, is people are less able to deal with the very same people who are around today, who were around back then, who are calling you names.

I can say from the era in which I grew up, I don't give a rat's ass what you say to me. Unless you are between me and some goal, then I'll have to navigate that in some way. If there's a racist person or a sexist person or a person with some kind of cultural bias, I want to know that, actually. I want you to say everything you want to say. Then I'll say, okay, that's who you are. That's how you're thinking. So now what do I need to do because you're in my way? Do I dig under you, go around you, leap over you? Or do I go this way and then come out the other side? Yeah, it's longer. It's more effort. It's more energy. But on some level,

it's sort of same different day. I can't say you're being racist. You're being, that's not, you got to navigate it. I think high school, that's where you learn how to deal with difficult people. There are people who are nasty. You're going to have to navigate them. There are people who you cannot interact with for whatever reason or another. They're going to be in navigate them. There are people who you cannot interact with for whatever reason or another. They're going to be in the cubicle next to you in your workplace. So I think we undervalue the total social pot that people

are tossed into in their high school experience. You want to say, oh, I could have learned more, but I had to deal with all these people. Hey, having to deal with all these people is now in your portfolio. Your motivation for the guests that you have in this couch they they had some vision statement and they have grit okay they got knocked down they stood back up they tried another way they got knocked down again then they were successful either measured by wealth or influence or or

just joy and their life's passions for For me, what I do for the public, 80 plus percent of it is driven by duty, not by ambition. That's how I view it, if that were the case. This is how I ended up hosting Cosmos in 2014. Ann Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan, who was hugely talented, she approached me and said, would you consider hosting Cosmos? I said, I don't. There's a dozen people, maybe half a dozen others, who would jump at this opportunity. I don't need to do this. I really don't.

Then I thought about it and I said, well, I met Carl Sagan when I was 17. I was applying to colleges. He was at Cornell. I had been accepted at Cornell, but didn't know what college I wanted to go to. And the admissions office saw that I wasn't totally in the moment there. They had forwarded my application to him for his reaction. And he sent me a letter. And I get this letter and I open it and it says, I understand you like the same stuff I like. Do you want to come visit the campus to help you decide if you want to go to Cornell? He met me outside his building on a Saturday.

Something really cool. He reached back, grabbed a book off the shelf. It was one of his books. And he signed it to me. Neil Tyson, future astronomer, signed Carl. Later in the day, I'm ready to go back to New York. It begins to snow, as it does often in December in Ithaca. And he says, here's my home number. If the bus can't get through from the snow,

spend the night with my family and go back tomorrow. I'm thinking, who am I? Why? Why? I'm nobody. But I was somebody to him. And I said to myself, if I'm ever as remotely famous as he is, I will treat students the way he has treated me.