Mark Bell's Power Project - Be A Creator of Your Circumstances | 10 Minute Walk

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is Mark Belvin, Super Training Jim, Super Training Jim, the strongest gym in the West, out here in West Sacramento, California, on yet another 10-minute walk. Man and his weakness is a creature of circumstances. Man and his strength is the creator of circumstances. Orison Swett Marden. I'm reading this quote to you today because I think that this is a really, really powerful quote. And I'd like to give you guys my interpretation of it. Let's start out with the beginning of this thing. Man and his weakness is a creature of circumstances. I think a lot of times our circumstances, we just think there are circumstances. This is just the way it is.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Just our environment is just this way. You know, using fitness as an example. A lot of times people are like, well, my family's pretty fat and unhealthy. I'm pretty fat and unhealthy. It's just my genetics. Sure, there's genetic components to a lot of things. There's tons of genetic components mixed in there, right? We know that. But you're not fat because of your genetics. You're probably fat because of your environment and because of your habits more so than anything else. Your genetics, you know, they kind of give you a code once you're, you know, kind of out in the world, but there's a lot of people fighting their genetics that aren't fat. I would be one of them. And fighting the environment I grew up in where we just had an abundance of food. A lot of times when you have these circumstances,

Starting point is 00:01:38 I mean, some people are born with crazy circumstances and some people get into crazy circumstances later on in life. Some people are born without a leg. Some people have to get an arm amputated because of an accident of some kind, a skiing accident. They broke a bunch of bones in their arm and the arm's never going to heal or it happens to the leg or the foot. We had someone on the podcast a while back, a female. She was a fighter and she has one lung. I forget the exact circumstances that she was under. But you got two lungs under normal circumstances.

Starting point is 00:02:11 She only has one. Wakes up every morning, does 100 push-ups, and she's a complete savage. Trains very hard, does some power lifting, and a very resilient person. Well, her lung capacity of this one lung is the equivalent of having two lungs. And we see this time and time again. So you can be a creature of your circumstances. Or you can be a creator of your circumstances, right? And that's a wonderful example.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And we see it with people that are blind. When someone's blind they can sometimes hear better and they become a great musician. We see it sometimes when somebody can't hear they might build another advantage somewhere else somebody's dumb or labeled as dumb or thought they were dumb able to build up power and strength in other areas maybe exponentially a little bit greater than everybody else so your weakness can actually become a strength. And I think that understanding that through a quote like this is really important. What you're currently weak at could be a strength. I was considered slow. Well, what's one of the great virtues of being a business owner,

Starting point is 00:03:20 a CEO, an entrepreneur? Being patient. not necessarily being slow, right? But being patient and allowing things to take time. It never bothered me that things took time. I was always just like, well, it's just a little more difficult for me to learn. I'm still going to do my best every time I learn. I'm going to give it the best effort I can, but I do understand that I learn a little differently than everybody else. Later on, that became a powerful virtue. I think a big part of this, a big thing that ties into this message right here, is your belief system.

Starting point is 00:03:58 You can have other people believe in you, and you can be a beautiful person, you can be jacked, you can be tan, you can be rich, you could be a beautiful person. You could be jacked. You could be tan. You could be rich. You could be kicking ass in business. You can kick ass as a father. You can kick ass in so many areas of your life as a brother, as a sister, whatever it is. You can kick ass in a lot of different areas, but if you don't have a belief in yourself, it's hard to really be happy with anything that you did. It's hard to feel fulfilled with anything that you did, because you don't truly believe in yourself. And so for me, I was very lucky that I always believed

Starting point is 00:04:37 in myself, because I had two amazing parents. My mom and my dad were both there to support me, to pick me up. And when I had trouble with math and things like that, I remember my mom would like make a joke. She'd be like, oh, don't worry about that stupid teacher. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's like, you're really talented. Like, you'll figure it out. And like, she just made math. She's like, it's eighth grade math.

Starting point is 00:05:00 She's like, who cares? Eighth grade math is not going to matter 15 years from now. I didn't know that until she said it. Like that's wonderful you know okay well that takes a lot of pressure off of me if eighth grade math doesn't matter as much as i thought it did meanwhile when you're doing that kind of stuff you think that that's the only thing that matters right man and his strength is the creator of his circumstances. This side of the quote, I think, is tough. Because I think a lot of people think that they don't believe in themselves enough that they can create their own circumstances.

Starting point is 00:05:35 But I'm here to tell you that you can. There's so many examples of this throughout history. People being told that they couldn't do something. The woman that wrote Harry Potter, she went to like 12 different publishing houses and got rejected every single time and then finally landed one. Sylvester Stallone, writing Rocky,

Starting point is 00:05:58 he had tons of resistance. Actually, when he went and read it with Carl Weathers, Carl Weathers said, hey, you know, if you get me the guy who's actually going to play Rocky to read with, I know I could do a better job. And they're like, that's him. It's Sylvester Stallone. And he was like, he's like, oh, shit. Like, I didn't know that this is the real actor. He just thought he was so bad that there's going to be no shot for this film, right?

Starting point is 00:06:27 Star Wars, another one, right? Walt Disney. People thought Walt Disney was crazy. They thought that guy was completely out of his mind. And look at the shit he's been able to build. So being a creator of your circumstances, I don't think people realize what great creators they are and what great creators we are and what great creators

Starting point is 00:06:45 we are. You know, we have innovation and we have imagination. Imagination builds bridges, builds tunnels. What's a bridge do? It takes you from one side to the other where you thought you wouldn't be able to get from one side to the other that quickly and that efficiently in that manner, right? A tunnel. You're going, literally going right through a bunch of rocks. You're going through a bunch of boulders. Somebody figured it out. Hey, we can chip away at those boulders. It might take a while. We can chip away at those things. We can create a hole and you can drive right through it. You can bring your horse and buggy right through it, right? Or as they got more advanced, they're like, we can just can blow that thing up a couple sticks of dynamite

Starting point is 00:07:25 will do the trick and bam you're on the other side creator of your circumstances i mean look mankind somebody in our history made the pyramids right we don't know how those things were made supposedly they dragged those things from 500 miles away some of those stones how'd they have the technology to break those stones and those rocks apart in a way that now still looks like it was like laser cut ancient aliens i don't know we don't know but what we what you can suspect is that these are creators of their circumstances these are people that wanted to figure out something that was going to be epic. They wanted to figure out something big. And they must have had, somebody must have had a belief in themselves to lead a group of people to be able to do something like that. All the other technologies that we have, the internet, our phones, the camera, this thing's

Starting point is 00:08:20 being filmed off of. That was created by by someone why can't that someone be you you know maybe you're not the next steve jobs maybe you don't come up with an iphone or maybe you don't invent a touch screen or maybe you don't invent a slingshot but can you be creative and innovative enough in your own life to be a creator of your circumstances so you make your circumstances better i think the answer is 100% yes. I actually don't even see why there would be a no in there. Because everyone possesses the ability

Starting point is 00:08:53 to error correct. So the things that you try every single day, you possess the ability to do them and sometimes you do them incorrectly or you don't do them as well as you wanted to and you say, oh wow, I kind of messed that up today next time i do it i need to do it this way and then you do it again and you

Starting point is 00:09:12 do it better kind of like playing a video game you know first couple times you play a video game you're going to die on the first level you might die at the first thing that you see because you didn't know that that thing could kill you you didn't know the cactus could kill you thought it would hurt you but you didn't know it'd kill could kill you. You didn't know the cactus could kill you. You thought it would hurt you, but you didn't know it would kill you, right? And you learn. And you learn fast. You learn quickly. Like, okay, freaking jump over the cactus. Let's be innovative. Let's be creative. And let's figure out a way to get through this level. That's life. You're trying to figure out a way to get through this level and get to the next one. Who has that ability to do stuff like that? Everybody.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Everybody. Everybody's got the ability to do that. Everyone has the ability to be a creator of their circumstances. The only way these things are going to happen, though, is if, A, you believe in yourself. The only way you're going to believe in yourself is to build up your character and remember

Starting point is 00:10:06 a character is a completely fashioned will your character is a is a mixture of the behaviors that you demonstrate every single day the things that you talk about the things that you actually do the things that you follow up on the things that you follow through, the things that you follow up on, the things that you follow through with, these things start to become habits. These habits start to become part of your

Starting point is 00:10:30 character. Your character and your will are interlocked. They're very much connected. When those things are interlocked and when you feel good about yourself, it's actually very easy to be a creator of your circumstances. I think when I think about creating stuff, if you look at everything on the Slingshot website, markbellslingshot.com, we had the most successful Black Friday of all time, the most successful Cyber Monday of all time in the middle of a pandemic because you guys are awesome we have amazing fans we have an amazing team here at slingshot world headquarters but all this was created from my head and i get asked a lot people are like did you ever think this is possible and i was like i'm always like yeah like

Starting point is 00:11:18 of course because i because i believe in myself it's not an arrogant thing. I actually think there's still so much more to do. I think this whole company could be doubled very easily in the next five years or so. And if it wasn't, I would actually be surprised by that. We have a lot of great concepts and ideas. We're surrounded with some really wonderful people and wonderful help. And so I just think it's going to happen that way but you're you're the person that's talking to you right now is way different than the person i was when i was 21 22 no driver's license

Starting point is 00:11:58 still driving around though illegally no bank bad credit, no insurance on the car that I was driving that I didn't have license for. Even once I did get my license, like it just, it took me, it took me many years to get myself out of the ditch and out of the hole that I was in. None of that would ever happen. Like if I would have felt like a loser, even though I kind of, well, I wouldn't say I was a loser. I would just say that I was really young. And I made some bad decisions. And I got, I tried to go to college, which was a bad decision. And I tried to get some like financial aid, get some loans and things like that.

Starting point is 00:12:37 And it just crushed my credit. And it kind of messed everything else up for me. So I'm sure a lot of you have been in those situations. But I've lived in shitty apartments. I've had, I had shitty circumstances. I was a creature. I was a creature of my circumstances. I was a byproduct of some of my weaknesses. Over a period of time, I kept leaning into, okay, where am I strong?

Starting point is 00:13:01 I'm not very good at that. You know, for years I would think about, sounds funny to say it, for years I would think about getting a job. Imagine that. For years I would think about getting like a conventional job, but I was like, like, there's just no, there's no scenario where I'll ever be good at that, you know? And I probably shouldn't have had that much self-doubt right there on that. I probably should have been more confident in myself when it came to that, but that's just the way I felt at the time. And I knew I needed to have my own thing. I knew I kind of knew who I was. And so I did a lot of other gigs. I did like personal

Starting point is 00:13:35 training, worked for a company called Mass Movement, where we moved fitness equipment, brutal job, was a bouncer. I just kind of did whatever I had to do to kind of get by. But while I was getting by, I was still dreaming. And while I was getting by, I was still creating. And while I was getting by, I was still learning and advancing and understanding that I'm a white belt. I squat 600 pounds, I'm a white belt. I squat 700 pounds, I'm a white belt. I squat 800 pounds, I'm a white belt. Squat 900 pounds, I'm a white belt. Squat a thousand pounds, I'm a white belt. I squat 800 pounds, I'm a white belt. Squat 900 pounds, I'm a white belt. Squat 1,000 pounds, I'm a white belt. Keep learning. Keep learning, keep progressing.

Starting point is 00:14:11 Same with bench press, 600, 700, over 800, right? Keep learning, keep getting better. What's holding you back from letting it go and letting it rip? And I would say that at the moment, you are a creature of your circumstances. You're a creature of the weakness that you have. You need to work on getting yourself over to the other side.

Starting point is 00:14:33 You need to get over on the other side and use your strength to be the creator of your circumstances. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you found this helpful, please share in the comments some of the turning points That you may have had That have helped you to kind of unlock The strength to be the creator of your circumstances Strength is never weakness Weakness is never strength

Starting point is 00:14:54 Catch you guys later

Mark Bell's Power Project - Be A Creator of Your Circumstances | 10 Minute Walk

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