The Resilient Mind - How To Get Unstuck - Les Brown

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

Les Brown is a dynamic personality and highly-sought-after resource in business and professional circles for Fortune 500 CEOs, small business owners, non-profit and community leaders from all sectors of society looking to expand opportunity. 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 How to Get Unstuck with Les Brown. Enjoy. This evening we're going to be looking at how to get unstuck. I think some of you know what I mean. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, what's using my life? Heard a guy give a lecture one time that says, We are today what we were when.

And he was talking about the fact that we, to a great extent, behave, think, react because of some previous experience that we've had. One of the things that we know about life is that it is always changing. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. Sometimes things go real well and sometimes they don't. Sometimes you're happy and sometimes you're sad. Now that's that thing called life. And when we begin to understand and know that, accepting that reality, that we will never ever have things just on an even kill all the time, that you're going to have some ups and you're going to have some downs.

But during those down moments, that's where the growth takes place. That's where the work is. Anybody can feel good when they have their health, their bills are paid, they have happy relationships, the children are acting normal. Business is successful. Anybody could be positive then. Anybody can have a larger vision then. Anybody can have faith under those kinds of circumstances. Am I correct?

See, but the real challenge, the real challenge of growth, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, comes when you get knocked down. Somebody said that adversity introduces a man to himself or a woman. How you handle it. That's where the growth takes place. When I was facing some challenges, I had a guy say something to me and I suggest this is one

of the first things that you want to do when you're facing a challenge. You want to get unstuck. Evaluate where you are. Look at it. Assess yourself. Assess yourself and assess the situation. What brought you there? What role did you play?

Earl Nightingale had a saying I like. He said, all of us are self-made, but only the successful will it. admit it. What has brought you to this point? What did you learn from it? Are you learning anything? Are you doing it over and over and over again? Somebody said that insanity is doing the same thing in the same way, expecting a different

outcome. Are you going through it or are you growing through it? Are you bigger and better because of it? Because it's not going to leave you until you grow through it. I was going through a major challenge in my life that was wearing me out, that was using me. And one of my students told me in a class that I was teaching, lessons in truth, she said, less until you handle it with grace, it will stay in your face. And it stayed there a long time.

The challenges of life, how do we get stuck? A friend of mine went through a divorce. my best friend. He had a wife that did not love him as much as he loved her. It was his first real true love. He was a very religious man. Did not believe in divorce.

He made a mistake. And he paid for his mistake with a lot of pain, a lot of tears. And there came to a point where he knew he should have gotten a divorce. but he was stuck. He was stuck in something called revenge. He said, she's made me so miserable.

I'm going to pay her back. He was stuck. And he stayed in there longer than he should have because it began to attack him. It began to affect him psychologically. And as a result of that, when he eventually did get a divorce, he took that same attitude to other relationships,

looking for something to go wrong. He was burned so far. badly. He did not want to risk pain again. He was going in relationships trying to avoid pain. When it became too close, he would do something to make sure the relationship did not work. He would always try and find something wrong with the person, because there are no perfect people, so if you look for it, you can find it. He was stuck in revenge. Another friend of mine Working on a job

Love the company very much expected to retire there And one day they call him in the office Ask him for his badge and identification To all the security man up Walked into his desk Told him he was fired and he had to leave then He was devastated

And if you came anywhere near him He will tell you his story As we all have stories even when he got a job. He went on the job telling anybody who would listen how they fired him unjustly. And he always ended with, it wasn't fair. Life isn't fair.

Life just is. It's not fair that birds eat worms, and they do. So we can't even deal with what's fair. But he's stuck in the fact that it's not fair. I don't deserve that. They were wrong. I used to be a state legislator in Columbus, Ohio. During the break, we used to go out on the front lawn of the Ohio legislature, the capital there, and observe people as they came by.

There was one particular person that all of us knew. The children, adults, everybody used to pick at him when he came by. We called him chicken man. He had a feather in his hat. He had a toy chicken on top of his car that he would drive around the area in downtown, blinking his lights and occasionally blowing his horn. When he got out of his car, he would drive, he would walk downtown with a baby carriage with two little baby dolls in there and a picture of a woman. And when you say something to him or came near him, you would hear him making the sounds of a chicken. All of us used to laugh at Chicken Man.

We didn't know Chicken Man's story. Chicken Man woke up one morning around 3 a.m. And his house was on fire. He panicked and he got out of the window, left quickly, only to get outside to hear his children and his wife screaming for help. He ran back to the door to go in to save them and the flames were too hot, too awesome. He tried to get in. He couldn't get in. He was desperate, frantic.

Pretty soon the cries stopped. They perish in the fire. His brother-in-law came, found out that his sister had died and his nieces in the fire. Grab chicken man and start beating him. You chicken, why did you save my sister? You're chicken, you're chicken. When the people pulled him off, Chicken Man, they picked him up and said,

Are you all right? And Chicken Man looked at him, and he started making the sounds of a chicken. He never ever overcame that tragedy. He was stuck from that experience. None of us knew why Chicken Man went around with this picture and these little dolls. I remember when I was stuck in anger for a long time, when I made a commitment to my adopted mother that I was going to purchase her home, I'll never forget the experience of working real hard to get the money for the down payment.

Someone had told me of a beautiful home and an exclusive area of Miami. I went to see it, took my mother there, and she said, yes, I want it. It was on the water. We went to the closing. My attorney said, Les, have you had a title search? I said, what's a title search? Well, we just take a couple of days to check it out and make sure there are no

liens against the property that you might have to pay if you buy this home. The guy who was there selling me to house, he said, listen, he said, the only reason that I'm selling you this house and selling it at a loss is because I admire the fact that you want to purchase this house for your mother.

I have another guy who will give me substantially more money, but like you and I've got to get back to Philadelphia. Now if we cannot consummate this deal now, then the deal is off. I said, there are no liens against the property? He says, no, of course not. I looked at my attorney. I said, I believe him. I'll sign. She said, Mr. Brown, I'm not questioning his honesty. She said, but business is business. I signed that contract. and we had a big celebration. Everybody in the neighborhood

was talking about Leslie coming home, one of the twins that made me adopted to buy her home. Child, isn't that nice? God is going to bless him. A few weeks later, I received a letter, a registered letter, indicating that the house was going up for sheriff's sale

on the courthouse steps. A man had filed a $12,000 lien against the property because the previous owner owed him that money. And if I did not come up with $12,000 in 30 days, he was going to sell the house to the highest bidder. I called this man and said, Mr. My name is Les Brown. I purchased this house.

I had nothing to do with your prior bill. He said, that's not my problem. He said, you should have had a title search. I said, can you give me time? I said, my mother is an older lady. she has a bad heart and I said please I said if you just give me the time I don't know how I'm going to do it with a house note and everything else but I think I can pay you at least $2,000 a month and within six months somehow I will pay your money he said no I want it all in 30 days or you get out I did everything I could racked my mind thinking about how I could get $12,000 because I took everything I could to get the money just for the down payment and the closing I finally had to face the reality that I wasn't going to be able to do it. I was up around 2 o'clock in the morning, walking back and forth, thinking, how was I going

to tell my mother this? My children were there in the room sleeping all night long. I agonized over this. I lost over 23 pounds. Pretty soon I went in the room where my mother was sleeping, and I said, Mama, I got down on my knees by the bed. I said, Mama, I got to talk to you. And she said, what's wrong?

I said, Mama, I said, we got to get out the house. I said, in my haste to buy the house, I made a mistake. She said, that's all right, baby. I didn't like this house anyhow. I said, Mama, you told me you loved it. I brought our friends out here to sit. She said, you know I have arthritis in my knees, and I don't like going up the steps,

but I knew it made you happy. You loved it so much. I said, Mama, I've lost 23 pounds, agonizing over this. Well, we had to pack up and go back to the old house down the street from Northwestern High School in Liberty City. All those neighbors who came out and saw us leave, those neighbors were there as we were coming back. We went in the house, the roaches were playing cards saying, come on in and take a hand. I was wiped out. I was embarrassed and humiliated.

Words cannot encompass the symbolism of what I felt. I remember when I was unloading the furniture and I began to cry. My sister came by. You know you didn't have any money to buy no house, Mr. Big Time. Giving me a quarter. You know Mama got a bad heart now, y'all, back where you belong. As I was crying and my head down, taking furniture in, my mama said, hold your head up. I said, Mama, I just feel so bad about this, Mama.

She said, hold your head up and dry your tears. You have nothing to be shame up. And I did, as we unloaded that furniture in that house. For several weeks, I was numb. I was immobilized with anger. If I had seen that guy, I was thinking about flying to Philadelphia. I had all kind of dreams about him. And I don't want to hit this guy here.

Hitting would have been too good for him. I just want to just grab him and just bite him. I just made him found him. They said, well, we found this guy just chew him. on him. Meeting would have been too good for him. I'd have just bit him every time he'd be. I'd have been like a Doberman pinchy. Yeah. God would have said, I thought I made everything, but I don't know where this came from. I was reading a book on forgiveness. And they had a line in there says, forgive and grow. I had to let that luggage go. You see, your mind is, you know when you're going to a service station again, get gas, you don't go in there and just start pumping. When you push the lever up, it clears the previous bill. By the same token, if you want to begin to move,

you've got to clear your mind of all the unnecessary luggage and baggage that's weighing us down. I couldn't move, I couldn't think about what am I going to do to get out of this situation because I was so concerned about what happened and what he did to me and how bad it was. I was so stuck in that. I couldn't even focus on what I should have done. Feeling sorry for myself and angry,

and none of that was taking me anywhere. So pretty soon, I learned through effort, made a conscious, deliberate, determined effort. I had to let it go. I had to forgive it. Let it go and begin to focus on developing myself. And I say to you, you're going to have people to do things to you. Things are going to happen to you.

And the most important thing to do is to harness your will and let it go. and move so you can grow, so you can get on with your life. It doesn't matter about what happens to you. What matters is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do now, Les? How long are you going to tell everybody at the bus stop and anybody who would stand and listen to you? How long you're going to repeat the same thing

over and over and over and over again? How many times do we have to hear that? Don't go around telling people what your story is. everybody has a story. 80% don't care and 20% glad it's you. They say, I'm glad that didn't happen to be. Sometimes you think you've got some problem. Do you hear somebody else's problem? And if that problem is real bad, it'd make you feel good. Am I right?

All right. So I had to let that go. All of us got stories to tell. Chicken Man allowed his tragedy to destroy his life. All of us have experienced some tragedy, and if we have and we will. And you can either let it destroy your life or you can build upon it. You can permit it to let it hold you down or you can decide I'm not going to let that happen to me. I'm bigger than this. Make a declaration to yourself.

Declare all out war that you're going to get out of this rut. I don't care how good you are, I don't care how talented you are. I don't care how much you work on yourself. There are some times when things I don't do. going to go right. They just are not going to go right. There are times when anything that can happen will happen. Murphy's law will be knocking at your door. Why? I don't know why. That's called life. And you have to deal with it. Sometimes your life will be in a slump, just like sports. Some of the best shooters can't hit baskets different times in games.

They get in a slump. Do they sit on the sideline and say, you know, I just didn't hit a basket today? No, they continue to execute. I suggest to you that if you are facing a challenge, don't stop. Stay busy. Work your plan.

Continue to do those things that you know that work for you after you have evaluated yourself in the situation. Continue to move. Stay busy, stay busy, stay busy. Repeat out to me. Help somebody. And help yourself. Because what you give,

is what you get. Find somebody that you can help so you can forget about you for a moment. See, sometimes the best thing to do is to be. Sometimes you have to just back up and go within yourself. A bow and arrow, you can't take a bow and just push it out an arrow. You just can't push the arrow out. You have to pull it back and then release it. Sometimes you have to back up and go within and pray and meditate

and recharge your batteries. Go away, clear your head. and then come back and look at it from a different vantage point. Don't operate while you are under the spell or the effect of what's going on. Next thing is that you've got to activate the thinker in you. Don't allow your emotions to control you. We are emotional, but you want to begin to discipline your emotion.

If you don't discipline and contain your emotions, they will use you. Your mind goes on automatic, just like a God. I love reading the book called As a Man Thinking by James Allen. He uses the analogy of the mind being like a garden. You know, weeds don't have to have any encouragement to grow. You don't have to water them. They don't have to get sunshine.

They don't have to have fertile ground. They will grow through the cracks of a sidewalk. Am I right? But if you want to grow orchids or roses or any kind of exotic flowers, there are special processes and procedures. you must go through. Well, by the same token, you don't have to force yourself

or motivate yourself to think negatively. To be depressed, to hate somebody, to want revenge, you want to get back at somebody, to beat yourself up over the head, to feel loaded with guilt. You don't have to make any effort to do that. Your mind is on automatic. It will do that by itself. But if you want to begin to move into your own personal greatness,

if you want to begin to really enjoy a happy, successful, healthy life, you've got to be willing to go against the tide. You've got to be willing to harness your will. And say, in spite of this, I'm in control here. I'm not going to let this get me down. I'm not going to let this destroy me. I'm coming back and I'll be stronger and better because of it. You have got to make a declaration that this is what you stand for.

You're standing up for your dreams. You're standing up for peace of mind. You're standing up for health. You want it. And you're going to go all out to have it. It's not going to be easy when you want to change. It's not easy. If it were in fact easy, everybody would do it.

But if you're serious, you'll go all out. Yes, I'm going to turn this situation around. I'm not going to sit back and moan and cry over what happened and what went wrong and who did what. I'm going to do something about this situation. The next thing that is important is that expect things to get better for you, because they are. See, life is cyclic. You're not, whatever experience you're having right now, it has not come to stay. It has come to pass.

Not to stay, just to pass. It's just going through. The biggest challenge is, is to know what's happening. this is a part of this thing we call life, this too shall pass, and maintaining perspective, putting it in perspective. I was doing a training at a college, and it was a two-day training during orientation. And in the training that I provide, I'm a motivational speaker,

but I conduct processes in personal dynamics, where people begin to go through changes that stimulate the right and left hemisphere of the brain, enable them to see themselves differently. I conducted this particular simulation with these young kids, and 18 years of age, so that they would begin to see how they make decisions or how they would survive in this particular simulation process we gave them. We had them to do it individually and then collectively. Over 30% of them wrote down as their first option in order to survive they would commit

suicide. First thing they wrote down. Suicide among young people has increased 300% over 5,000 will successfully take their lives this year. Why? Why did they do that? They def- I said, I was so shocked, I said, what do you mean? Well, at least we would not suffer.

And then they had the nerve to write down all of the other things they were going to do after they committed suicide. I said, listen, Kadambo. No, when you come up with a permanent solution for a temporary problem, that's it. Game's over. That's it. You're not going to do anything. Anybody wrote suicide at the top, you can put your pencil down. See, a lot of us because of our limited vision of ourselves, a lot of us who begin to focus on problems and enable them to overwhelm us, we begin to think that we have no options.

We begin to believe that there's no way out. Repeat after me, there's always a way. Where there's a will, there's a way. Shake somebody's hand on your right and left and say, I'm unstoppable. You've got to make those kind of declarations to yourself. I'm unstoppable. This will not get me down. And if I get knocked down,

I'm going to be like Leo Piscow. You said, you're going to have some low moments in life. But when you do, you will have high lows. When you work on yourself. What are some of those things that you can do during this period of time? Go for walks. Do some things for you. Just go for a stroll.

So you can engage in some reflective thinking on life, on yourself, looking and enjoying the universe, smelling the roses along the way. Listen to upbeat music. Music that inspire you. I have only but goodies. I have strategies that I engage in to recharge my batteries.

I'm preparing for that because I know things are going to happen that I cannot anticipate. Very good friend of mine died the other day. I had a program for myself. I have books that I read that inspire me, tapes that I listen to that fire me up.

Because you're going to have sometimes low moments when you won't want to get out of bed. Just want to stay there. At times you won't want to come out the house. There are times you'll be feeling bad and don't know why I was wrong. I don't know. Just leave me alone. What did that happen? I don't know.

It's called life. The other thing is take full responsibility for your life. Accept where you are and the responsibility that you're going to take yourself where you want to go. Someone said we have two primary choices in life. We can either accept conditions as they are. conditions as they exist, or we can take the responsibility to change them. See, a lot of people want to exempt themselves from taking responsibility. All they want to do is talk about the problem. Every time you see them, they'll tell you their story over and over and over and

over again. No, no. You want to take responsibility for your life. I got me here, I can get me out of this. And I'm getting out. I'm not going to be a volunteer victim. George Bernard Shaw said there are two kinds of people in life. You know, he said those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that don't know what happened. And he said the people that get alone in this life look around for the circumstances that they want and if they can't find them, they make them. They create them. So part of beginning to get unstuck, you've got to decide that the behavior pattern that you have adopted doesn't work for you. You've got to change your strategies.

And changing your strategy means reinventing your life, recreating you, and you have the power to do that. You can decide that you're going to change, that you're not going to be a whim. You can decide that you're going to stand up to life. You can decide that I'm going to live each day as if it were my last. You have the power to make that decision. You can decide I'm going to work on myself and develop myself.

I'm going to empower me. And all of these things that are happening to me right now, they're just temporary inconveniences. They're not stronger than I am. I'm in charge here. Next thing is separate what you do from who you are. That's what the guilt trap is about. See, a lot of folk won't let you forget what you used to do

to do of what you have done, what mistakes you've made. All of us have made some mistakes in life. All of us have done some things that if we had them to do over again, we wouldn't do it again. A lot of things that if I had it to do over again, if I knew then what I know now, I would have done it differently.

Well, it didn't happen that way. And that's what you call life. I didn't do it like that. Oh, you don't want me to live that down. How you want to keep on putting that in my face about what I did? Guess what? I'm not interested. That's what I did then. Won't do it today so you are picking on an innocent man. Hello. So as you're in the process of reinventing your life, write a description of the kind of person that you want to be.

What are the things that you must overcome? What qualities about your personality? You know that you're going to have to change because those particular characteristics are liabilities to you. What are your assets? What are your strong points? Look at and evaluating yourself to make that determination. Other thing is that in order to get out of a rut, we need some coaching. Find some trusted critics. People that you know, care about you and love you. There's some things that keeps us from growing and getting out of ruts.

Number one, we identify with feedback. We take it personal. When someone want to give us some feedback on where we are falling short and tell us about our blind spots, we want to have everything being positive about us. We're not perfect. It hurts.

I have a friend who's a trusted critic. I don't like him, but I love him. He doesn't tell me the things I want to hear. He tells me what I need to hear so I can grow. It hurts. It hurts when he put me on the hot seat. I can't stand it. But that's the only way that I can grow.

And I'm glad that he loves me enough to risk our friendship to tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. Get a support group, somebody that you can talk to, people who perhaps might have a similar problem. Support groups are very powerful that you can share some of the challenges that you're going through. And it might be a situation where one person can give you an idea of how they handle that situation and create an opening for you. begin to stimulate some possibilities in your mind on how you can resolve the problem. We can't grow by ourselves. As I mentioned before, we grow from people and projects. The other thing is about life when things happen to you, when you permit things to use you,

you can't change the past, but you can interpret. You can reinterpret how you see it. For years, I was going around with a heavy load on my shoulders. feeling bad because I was adopted. Doing interviews for adoption agencies and foster homes. And I was on television once, and I told these people in this particular interview that I was given away my twin brother and I when we were six weeks of age. A friend of mine, fortunately, was listening to the program.

And she said, Les, like to have lunch with you. And so I went over to see her. She said, when a woman carries a baby for nine months, feeling that life movement in her, it's automatic and natural for her to learn to love that baby, to expect it to come here when she bears the pain to bring it into the world. Your mother, Mamie Brown, when she came in to adopt you guys, she didn't go through that process. She looked at whoever your biological mother was and said, I'll take her. you weren't giving away less, you were chosen with love. Same circumstances, same event, but reinterpreted. An interpretation that empowers me.

Am I making sense to you? So when you begin to look at your past, give an interpretation that empowers you, that's where I used to be. That's not where I am now. I'm growing. Now I want you to think about in your mind right now, think about

some particular event or act in your life that you feel very bad about. That you really regret that that took place. If you had to do over again, you would do it differently. With that there, I want you to see yourself

in your mind's eye and say to yourself, I love myself unconditionally and I forgive myself if I knew better I would have done better I want you to think about somebody that

that cost you some pain cost you some disappointment somebody that you don't like let me tell you something about the mind how it uses you tell you something super stupid that I used to do Do you know for years I hated my mother

and my father whoever they were because they gave me away as I thought at that point in time? And guess what? I didn't have any faces for the hatred because I never saw either one of them. And I said I hate them for that.

And then once I forgave them and said, it's okay. Had they not given me away, I would have never been blessed to have the mother that I have, who to me is the greatest mother in the world. So the universe unfolds as it should. But when I went through this process saying, forgive them,

I remember in my mind as I was trying to picture these people, I had two individuals in my mind standing there with no faces because I didn't know how they look. But I released that. I let that luggage go. Think about somebody, that you've heard somebody, that you've disappointed, it either deliberately or inadvertently or someone that has hurt you. Deliberately or inadvertently.

Think about them. Somebody that you really, really, when you think about them, the room turns red. Look at them in your mind's eye and say, I forgive you. I forgive you unconditionally. Boy, that's a heavy load to let off. When I thought about that guy, I said, wait a minute, I can't, no, you don't know what this guy did. This was my mama.

You don't know what we went through. My students said, let's forgive, let it go. If you want to be forgiven, you better forgive somebody. None of us are perfect. All of us have made some mistakes. And it wasn't easy. It's not easy forgiving, am I right? It's hard.

See, everybody won't forgive. They say, I forgive, but I don't forget now. Let it go so you can grow. Let's get a little demonstration here. Throw it up on this side here, right? Demonstrate it like this. Let's go. I throw away negative thoughts.

Revenge. Guilt. Anything that's been holding me back. Now with that right hand, let's bring something in. I bring in love. Peace of mind. Good relationships. Whole lot of money.

Why people raise their voices when we say a whole lot of money. I mean, they get serious too, you know what I mean? And usually people don't use one hand. They use two hands, see? They try to borrow somebody else's hand, you know. Reinterpreting our past, understanding and knowing that we can move from where we are, that we can begin to design the kind of life that empowers us, that gives us happiness,

that enable us to be on top of who we are, knowing that as we begin to explore new horizons and new vistas in life, that as we begin to focus on developing ourselves, as we begin to elevate ourselves and not to follow the crowd, activating the thinker in us and disciplining and putting on hold the emotional part of our selves, It's not easy, but through practice and practice and practice, practice makes what? Absolutely not. Dismanel that belief system. Practice makes improvement. You can always better your best.

You can always go beyond anything that you have ever done. You never hit a state of perfection. You're always bigger than what you do. And so all you're looking for are new breakthroughs through practice and practice and practice, you'll get better and better and better. better and there's still some things that will happen to you that will catch you on the blind side that you did not anticipate. You'll get knocked down but you won't be knocked out. You'll be able to get to your feet again, be on the ropes, but you have a fast recovery rate when

you work on yourself. Read inspirational books of course. Listen to tapes that begin to inspire you and stay around people who will empower you. People that will Help you feel good about who you are as you're in the process of transforming your life. Life is so beautiful. Today someone gave me something on life called What is Life? I like to share it with you. In summary, getting unstuck means that you are going to start living life on your terms. Rather than just gliding through every day on automatic.

that you are aware, that you're stimulated and you're excited about your unfolding future, that you have a special power within, that you know the things are going to get better for you, you know that you can handle this, and sometimes you have to cry. Sometimes life will take you to your knees, but the pain opens faces in the heart for joy. Somebody said about life, I love this, says, life is like an onion. You have to peel it one layer at a time. And sometimes you cry. This author said about life, life is a challenge.

Meet it. Life is a gift. Accept it. Life is an adventure. Dare it. Life is a sorrow. Overcom it. Life is a tragedy. Face it.

Life is a duty. Perform it. Life is a game. Play it. Life is a mystery. Unfolded. Life is a song. Sing it. Life is an opportunity. Take it. Life is a journey completed. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is a beauty, praise it.

Life is a struggle, fight it. Life is a goal, achieve it. Life is a puzzle. Solve it. Isn't that beautiful? I love that. Thank you for tuning into this episode. episode. If you're enjoying the content, you can access exclusive material by becoming a subscriber. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.