The School of Greatness - 537 You Make the Meaning

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

"We get to write the story that we want to write." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/537

This is 5-Minute Friday! You make the meaning. Tony Robbins said, The quality of your life is the quality of the meaning you give to everything in your life. Anything in life is neither good or bad, but our meaning makes it so. That being the case, we get to decide what meaning we give our tough times. Are they challenges? Are they going to destroy us?

Or are they opportunities? Were they sent to make us stronger? Or is the world always against us no matter what? Will we succeed despite the challenge and create an amazing story of perseverance? Or will this moment be used as an excuse as to why we never made it? Many people use the painful events of their life as excuses. Some of them use it as their motivation and it's their reason why they must succeed. Now there were many times in my life where I said, man, this isn't fair. This sucks.

Everyone's against me. No one understands me. I don't have the opportunity. People don't get it because I'm not set up the way they are. They had different parents who didn't get divorced. They didn't have as many bullies as I had. They had friends. They had teachers that supported them, whereas I didn't feel like I had that.

People can either make excuses or you can make things happen based on the meaning around the experiences of your life. We get to decide what everything means to us. We get to tell ourselves a story, and this story could be the thing that holds us back every single day. The story that I didn't have the right education. The story that I wasn't smart enough. The story that I wasn't big and strong enough. The story that she cheated on me. He left me. He hurt me. She lied to me. We have all these stories we can create that can put our life in a downward spiral, or we can create a different story and make a new meaning about what happened and how you

want things to happen moving forward. Well, that didn't work out, but I'm excited because it's not really what I wanted. Man, that person really hurt me bad. They really scared me. They lied. They manipulated. They took advantage of me. They stole from me. They cheated on me. Everything wrong they could have done, they did to me. And you know what? I'm glad it's over and I'm not in that situation anymore. Now I get to move forward and learn from my experience, learn to be more aware and discerning in certain moments where I'm getting manipulated

and cheated on every single day of my life. And now I get to tell myself a new story and I get to give new meaning to my life to make sure those things don't happen to me and serve and support others who are going through struggles in their life. We get to give meaning to every situation. in their life. We get to give meaning to every situation. And when we put meaning on something that is great, that happens to us, when we say, oh, it wasn't good enough, it was still bad, I could have done better, and we put ourselves down in amazing moments, then that's a challenge as well. We get to acknowledge and accept powerful, amazing things in our lives where some people take so many things for granted that happen good in their lives. All the good that happened, they have kids, they have jobs, they're making money, but they're still unhappy because they're

making comparison to other people's meaning and other people's lives. We get to see where we're at in our lives, evaluate it, write the story we want to write, and create meaning from all the good that happens, and accept and acknowledge and celebrate the good. And when things happen that don't go our way, don't look at the negative side of things, but put meaning on the lessons, the things we learn that will support us in moving closer towards our dreams. We get to make the meaning, my friends. That means all the good and all the bad. Find the positives from each situation. Because some people have amazing lives, but they take it for granted and they make excuses for why it's not better

and they miss it. They miss an amazing life. And some people have nothing, yet they make meaning and they find value in all the challenges they face and feel so much more fulfilled and happy in the process. You get to make the meaning. This is episode number 537, 5-Minute Friday.

If you enjoyed this, make sure to screenshot this on your phone and tag me on your Instagram story at Lewis Howes and share it out with your friends, lewishowes.com slash 537. I hope you enjoyed this one and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.