The Resilient Mind - 2025: Lock In & Break Through - Steve Harvey

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Broderick Stephen Harvey, Sr. is an American television host, actor, writer, producer, and comedian. He hosts The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Family Feud, Celebrity Family Feud, the Miss Universe competition, Family Feud Africa, and the arbitration-based court comedy Judge Steve Harvey.Download Mindset App for free and listen to 5000+ of the World's Greatest Motivational Speakers and Thought Leaders: https://bit.ly/mindsetxTheResilientMind Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Lock In and Breakthrough with Steve Harvey. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Something I really wanted to say to you because I want to give it to you the way I got it. You know, it kind of just really, really hit me within the last six months. I kid you not. Just kind of really hit me of late, I guess I'm saying.

It's something that I learned, man. I got it a couple of ways. I was watching this movie. I was reading this book. I kind of got it a couple of ways, but it came to me. It just dawned on me how correct it was and how. Oftentimes I've shot myself in the foot. How many times I had blocked so many blessings that could have come my way had I just been

a little bit more of this. And I learned it and I stopped blocking them, you know. And it's starting to really, really open up the pipe. into my life, a pipeline of blessings. You know, it could be whatever you need. It could be money. It could be family. It could be relationship.

It could be education. It could be peace. It could be relevance. It could be any number of things. Whatever you hope for us that you consider success. It don't have to be money. But if that's on your list, you can get some of that too. But listen to me.

Gratitude is the best gift that you can give yourself. What? That don't make no sense. Dee. Yes, it does. gratitude is the best gift that you can give yourself. It really is, man. Gratitude is the best gift that you can give to yourself.

See, don't you get it? If you're grateful for what you have, for whatever it is, you open up the pipeline for more to come in, let me tell you why, because you're not complaining about what you have. Oftentimes, we can't show gratitude. We don't have time to be thankful, or we can't give a full compliment of appreciation because we complaining. Man, I don't ever get this.

I only got this. My car can only go this far. All I got is this right here. Every time I turn around something broke on this car. Why are you complaining? Suppose you reverse that. Just suppose. I thank you for the house that I do have for a roof over my head.

I thank you for shelter. I thank you for having a home. I thank you for having a mortgage to pay. I thank you for being able to come up with this rent to stay here. I thank you for all these things. I thank you for when things go wrong in my life. You're always there and get it fixing straightened out for me. I thank you.

I'm grateful for you. Okay, now let me ask you something. If you were a person that was providing these things for someone, let's say you were the person that was providing shelter, heat, roof over your head, a place to stay. Let's say you were the person that was. providing that. And the person that we was receiving it, who has nothing but that, was always complaining about it. Every time you turn around, now you didn't gave this to this person,

you didn't let them have it. But every time you look up, they complain and they point in the finger at you. Look what I ain't got. I ain't got this. You got it. And you be sitting there with that dog, man. I gave this to them. And they just steady complaining about it. Now, let's say you gave it. the exact same thing to someone else. The exact same thing. Shelter, Ruth, over your head, house in the same condition. Look just like the house you gave this person

that was complained. But every time you turn around, it was telling somebody, you know what, I should appreciate this. I show appreciate this place to stay, man. My family, man, we don't know where we be without it. I sure am grateful, man. It was rain another day and didn't the drop get on us, man.

We was in this house, man. Oh, man. You know, some things go wrong. wrong with it, but man, I show glad I got this right here because they always make a win somehow. Sometimes it always works out. Now, if you were the person that was providing these things, and this one person that had this house that ain't as sharp or as good as the other houses, was complaining all the time about it. But the other person over here was grateful for it. When it came time to fix up the house, improve the house, add more on to the house,

or maybe you had another house to give away, who would you give the house to? I think logically you would give it to the person who has shown the most appreciation for it. I bet you, man, if I didn't gave somebody to something and all they do is complain about it, I can assure you that if they come back to me for some more, I'm going to be real slow to grant that wish. Because, man, the last time I gave you a place to stay, I know it wasn't the best house. on the block, but you didn't have nothing when you came to me. And I gave that to you. That the more gratitude you show, the more grateful you are, the more blessings can come your way. It only makes sense. So that's why I'm telling you, gratitude is the best gift that you can give yourself.

When you are trying to get to the next level and you can see where you're trying to get to, there is a ceiling that you have to break through. But in order to get to the next level is because you can see what you want to become. But the only reason you can see the next level is because this ceiling is made of glass. In order to get to the next level, you must be willing to break through the glass. Anytime you break through glass, you are going to get cut. You are going to bleed. And in order to get to the next level, you are going to have to give up something that you care about. You cannot take everything with you. Everybody come with you can't go with you. So when you go through the glass ceiling, you have to be willing to get cut. The cut is going to put

some bruises and bludge. But that's the only way to get to the next level. I understood that. I knew that I could not remain the same and change. You got to grow. You can't hang out with everybody you've been hanging out with to go to the next level. You can't do everything you used to do. If you do that, you'll never grow. thing that you want the most of, it's the very same thing that you're going to have to give the most of. I'll say it again. The things that you want the most of, that very same thing is the thing that you're going to have to give the most of. See, there is no theory of Newton, you know, behind every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

You know, behind every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Well, that happens throughout all the principles of success, too. I want you to understand something. See, you can't have peace if you're practicing war. Tell me, tell me how that works. You can't have progress in your life. If your business is holding someone else back, it cannot happen. But if you're climbing a ladder and you're stepping on each rung of the letter,

and that's producing progress for you, you're progressing up the line. ladder. That means every step you step on another rung going up, you are taking another step higher. If you one time stop putting your foot in front of the other to step on the next wrong and you look over and you take some time out to push someone off their ladder or you lift your foot to kick them off one of their wrongs of the ladder, guess what you have done? You have immediately stopped your progress. You can't progress and be in the business of holding anyone back. Anybody because to kick somebody off the ladder, you got to take your foot off of yours. And you got to be careful when you do that because he ain't the only one can slip and fall.

If there is joy you are looking for in your life, you cannot be in the business of passing out pain. You cannot, man. Oh, God, I want to have a life, a wonderful life with this person over here. But you steady creating pain in somebody else's life over there. You ain't going to have no joy. The number one thing you have to understand about trying to be successful, and I guess I call this the four P's. I may come up with five along the way I don't know. I'm just talking as is giving to me.

So I'm going to start by saying these are the four P's of success that you have to get ready for. Number one is pressure, pure pressure. Being successful is just pressure. A lot of it is applied by the circumstance of what you're trying to go for and what you're trying to do, but a lot of it also is self-imposed pressure. It's what you put on yourself to make it. It's a sense of urgency. It's a sense of necessity. But pressure is the first thing I want you to be ready for. And pressure comes in a lot of different forms, but it's going to be pressure. There's an old saying that pressure bust a pipe. See, that's why most people turn around because of the

pressure of trying to be successful. I want you to get it in your mind that it is going to be a pressurized situation on your rise to the top. Pressure wise. It's going to be pressure. It's going to be difficult to do. It's going to be moments when it seems like it's real heavy. It's going to be moments, man, when it feel like you're going to burst. Us all comes from pressure.

Pressure buster pipe. Pressure. But understand that that is what it is, is not going to change. That's it. Prepare yourself. Get ready for there to be pressure. The second thing I want you to understand is when you receive. receive this pressure, you have to persist. You got to stay at it. You got to develop a dog itness.

There's a song out that says, why must I feel like that? Why must I chase the cat? Nothing but the dog in me. That's a funny line in that song, because really I was thinking about it one day. I was humming it. And it occurred to me. Say, why must I feel like that? Why must I chase the cat? Nothing but the dog in me. And, you know, now you could take it in the literal sense that cat chases the dog because it's innately, it's in his spirit that cats and dogs are a lot of times enemies. Now, people have pets and have proven that if you show love on both sides, they can exist. And that happens too. But naturally, innately, when your cat goes by a dog and your dog don't recognize them, there's some barking going on. I'm talking about just walking through the neighborhood or something.

But the reason that this dog is so persistent towards this. cat is just cause it's in him. It's innately in him. And what I'm saying to you, just using that as an analogy, is that you got to be persistent in that you got to develop some dog in you now, because pressure takes some fighting back. See, if you don't fight back against pressure, pressure buster pipes are what you think it'll do to you. Pressure crack walls. Pressure cause explosion. So if you don't fight back to hold it in, you understand pressure does most people in. The simple thing called pressure. The weight of what it feels like to want to be successful every single day over and over and over and over and over.

It's just too much pressure. People crack. You got to persist. You have to persist. The thought of giving up can come, but you got to get it out. You got to persist. I'm a college dropout. I was homeless, lived in a car for three years.

I've lost every single thing I had. family included. I've been written off so many times. But today, the person that you're sitting in front of you is a process. I want to talk to you for a moment about the process. Because, see, one way to get a person to really follow you is to be the example of what you get, of what you're trying to get them to follow. You know, my daddy used to tell me all the time, he said, son, best thing you can do for poll people is not be one of them, because you can't help the call. Your brain is divided into two halves, positive and negative, good and evil. Each half of your brain has millions of factory workers on each side.

You got a million factory workers on the positive side. You got a million factory workers on the negative side. At the forefront of each one of those factories in your brain is a foreman. You got forming positive and you got forming negative. You are in charge. You're the boss of the factory. So let me show you how this works. You got a remote control.

You go to your house tonight and you press that power button and you press it. When you point it at the TV, what do you expect to happen? You expect TV to come on. You press the power button. You expect the TV to come on. If you want to watch HBO, and HBO is channel 300,

and you press 3-0 and then you press select. What do you expect to come on that TV? And what comes on that TV? So now, since your brain is in two halves, let me show you how this works. You wake up in the morning and you say, man, I don't feel myself today. I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I'm not a morning person. Forming negative.

He hears that. He steps to the front. He said, what did you say? You said I woke up on the wrong side of the bad day. I'm not myself. I'm not a morning person. He says, you got it right away. He said, hey, the boss just woke up and said he's not a morning person.

He's having a bad day today. And he ain't feeling this self. Let's get to work. The million factory workers start producing thoughts to justify what you just said. So now guess what? Man, I hate my alarm clock went off this morning. I got to get out here in this traffic. I'm going to drive down here today.

I don't even like these people. on my job. I can't stand this car. I'm fin to get in this morning. Shall I wish I had a new car but I'm driving this ragged-ass car and on and on and your day starts tumbling into what you ordered at the top of the day. You could wake up in the morning and you say you know what? Today is going to be a great day today. I expect something really good to happen for me today. Man, thank you Lord for waking me up this morning. He said, what did you say? You said I said I'm having a great day today. I expect something good to happen today. Thank you, Lord, for waking me up.

Forming positive turns around and goes, all right, let me have your attention. Steve's having a great day today. He's expecting some wonderful things to happen. And man, let's get it going. And they start manufacturing thoughts. Same brain. Man, I can't wait to go to work today. It may not be the job I won't, but at least I got a job. I appreciate the fact that I don't have a car, but at least I can walk to the train. Man, this is going to be great today. That's how your mind works 24-7. It never turns off. You have got to change the way you think. It is the whole determining factor of where you go in life. We are all where we are today because we thought ourselves to this position. If you don't like the position,

think yourself out of it. Change your attitude. You change your altitude. I'm going to tell you something that every successful person has to do, including you, believe it or not, every successful person in this world has jumped. I'm going to tell you what I mean by that. You eventually, you are going to have to jump. You cannot just exist in this life. You have got to try to live. If you are waking up thinking that it's got to be more to your life than it is, man, believe that it is. believe in your heart of hearts that it is. But to get to that life, you're going to have to jump. You see people in life when you're standing on the cliff of life and you see people

soaring by, when you see people soaring, going to exotic places, you hear about them doing wonderful things. Maybe you look up the street and your neighbor just gets a car every year and every two years. How is he doing that? Have you ever thought? Maybe this person right here has identified their gift and is living in their gift because your Bible says, this is your Bible, says your gift will make room for you.

Your gift, not your education. You go get an education, that's nice. But if you don't use your gift, that education only going to take you so far. I know a lot of people got degrees, man. They ain't even using them. It's your gift. But the only way for you to soar is you got to jump. You got to take that gift that's packed away on your back.

You got to jump off that cliff and pull that cord. that gift opens up and provides the soul. If you don't ever use it, you're going to just go to work. And if you're getting up going to work on a job every day that you hate going to, that ain't living, man. You just exist. At one point in time, you ought to see what living's like. But the only way to see what living like, you've got to jump and hit a problem.

Let me just be real with you. When you first jump, let me tell you something, your parachute will not open right away. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you it did, but it don't. When you jump, it's not going to open right away. You're going to hit them rocks. You're going to get some skin tow off on them cliffs. You're going to get all your clothes tore off. You're going to get some cuts on you.

You're going to be bleeding pretty bad. But eventually, eventually the parachute has to open. That is a promise of God. Here's another thing. You can play it safe. and deal without the cuts and the tars. And you can stand on that cliff of life forever safe. But if you don't jump, I got another promise I can make you.

Your parachute will never open. You'll never know. You'll never know what God really have for you. I was speaking at a school once. I was talking to the students. The principal was mortified with my message because I was telling the truth. I was telling the kids, your education is important.

But your education is not the most important thing in your life. I'm sorry, it's not. Your dream is the most important thing in this world. Principal came up on the stage while I was speaking. Don't ever say that to my school again. Well, I'm just telling you, dog. You could save your kids a lot of pain if you ever talk to them about their dreams. You gotta talk to young people about their dreams.

If you talk to kids about their dreams, your dreams can spur you to get the education. But if you never find out what a child is dreaming about, you can't hold their attention. It's the dream, man. You gotta dream about something so bad. big that it dwarfs all your fears. The way you overcome fear is with your dream. You gotta make your dream so big that nothing matters except that dream. You're willing to do everything that's necessary.

I was listening to Will Smith the other day. Will Smith said, the best things in life is on the other side of fear. It's on the other side of fear. But fear freezes people, man. The fear of failure freezes people. Suppose I don't do it. Well, you might not make it. But I got news for you.

If you don't do it, you damn show you. ain't going to make it. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. I talk to so many people who get older like some of us are and they've lost to faith. Well, faith is really simple. It's the faith is the substance of things hoped for. All that mean is in the beginning you just hope something pop off. You know, you just kind of hope something happened for you. I was hoping I would get on TV. I wrote it on a piece of paper when I was 10. I want to be on TV. The problem I had when I wrote it at 10 was I suffered from a severe stuttering problem. I could not talk outside of my house. So can you imagine when I wrote on a piece of paper,

I want to be on TV and turn that in. But when I wrote it on the paper, it wasn't factual. I was just hoping. You just got to start with the hope. Faith is the substance of things that you hope for. You just hope something, Joe. Then what happened in through grace and favor, he gave you a couple of things you hope for and then you're supposed to start believing then because now it turns into faith. But if you take this scripture, faith is the substance of things hope for and the evidence of things not seen. Albert Einstein said that imagination is everything. It's the preview to life's coming attractions.

That's what your imagination is. Your imagination is actually very, very real. Everything you imagine could be a preview to life. life's coming attraction. Everything we have today came from somebody's imagination. Somebody was talking on the phone with their cord on the wall and got sick of it and said, you know what, man, if I could just go outside and talk on the phone, we got cell phones. Somebody got tired of driving across the country and said, man, if I could fly over there, boom, we got airplanes. Imagination is everything. It's a preview to life's coming

attractions. Everything you've ever imagined is real. The problem with most people is, you think your imagination is hocus pocus. It's really not. It's a preview of a coming attraction. If you react to your imagination, that's where your real life is. It's just God showing you what he has for you. The problem people have is they tell their imagination to the wrong people. See, if you want to kill a big dream, tell it to a small-minded person.

It's dead. How many times, man, have you had a tremendous idea? something you thought was the one and you wouldn't told it to your loved ones and your so-called friends and they shot it down I mean you was convinced that it was just

oh man I just came to you and you told it to them and they shot it down and you thought since they was your loved ones and their friends and they got your best interest at heart you believed them you was wrong you let them talk you let them talk you out of what God got for you As a kid, you know, I didn't know, but my gift is that I found out later on, I have the ability to think extremely quick, and I can take any piece of information and transpose it into comedy immediately.

Now, when you were a kid and you don't understand that, you get in a lot of trouble. I didn't know what it was until I got older, that this was a gift that it did make room for me, that I became a stand-up comedian, which started with a dream of mine, and it led to where I am today. lot of stuff that happened in between that. But your gift is the thing that you do the absolute best with the least amount of effort. That's your God-given gift, and everybody has one, and God gives it to you at birth. You don't have to go anywhere to discover it. It's not in the water. It's not on the mountain top. It ain't hid under a rock. Your God-given gift is instilled in you at birth. If you pursue that as opposed to your passion, there lies your greatest chance for success. The problem with people is we don't pursue our gift oftentimes.

We try to go get an education and make it think that's going to get us somewhere. If you identify that gift, man, that gift is the thing that can make you great. We're all participating in this thing called life. Life has event flows, mountaintops, it's got valleys, it's got thunderstorms, earthquakes, this life. You stop expecting it to go smooth, because it ain't fin to go smooth. The road to success is always under construction.

Ain't no, this life ain't set up to be smooth. You combat negativity and you combat discouragement with gratitude. It's the one way to combat discouragement is with gratitude. What messes you up is you focus on the thing that's not happening. And that causes you to get discouraged. So whenever you get discouraged, you have to change your focus from what's not happening

to what has happened. And it straightens you out immediately. Because what causes the downslide is if you get wrapped up into what ain't happening, it'd get ugly, man, and it just snowballed. But you have to focus on gratitude. People understand how serious gratitude is. You know, it's a serious principle of success.

It's hard to be miserable and grateful at the same time. You have to take chances in life. If you don't take chances in life, you'll never have the life God has for you. Life is about risk. If you play it safe in life, you ain't going to have much of a life. If you play it safe,

you won't have much of a life. Life is risk. It takes courage to pursue your dream. I just did it. It cost me everything. But eventually, God is very good, man, when he sees you take a leap of faith.

He supplies you everything you need. Now, it's going to cost you something. But most people, most people are not willing to pay what it costs to go after your dream because you're going to have to hurt a little bit. And most people don't like being uncomfortable. If you don't want to be uncomfortable, please do not pursue success. Because success is a very uncomfortable feeling. And I just learned to be, I learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.