Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Best Motivational Speech Compilation EVER | I'M GOING TO WIN

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

"The difference in winning and losing is most often not quitting" - Walt Disney

You're not here just to get by, to check a box. No, you're here for something different. Maybe it's your desire to chase down that sunrise while the rest of the world sleeps, to embrace the difficult, the inconvenient, in exchange for that little bit of glory you'll soon feel as you pour your morning coffee and start your day. Or maybe it's your fascination with the fact that every time you ask yourself, if there's more, if you have anything left, the answer always seems

to be yes. And maybe that's it. That what you're capable of in a world of finitude and constraint and limitation seems to be the only thing with absolutely no bounds. The human soul undergoes a sort of transformation, if you will. Every time we look around at what currently is and decide it will soon be the gateway to something more.

And that's life's best kept secret. The word decide. The idea that we choose whether to accept things as they are or to change them. that we have within us the ability to push further than we've ever pushed, to find what was once only existent in our imaginations. And this will always be true. You get what you seek.

What you're willing to endure. And while some see this tradeoff as too much, as a cost far too expensive, Others see it as the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to give some of you so that you can grow and improve all of you. See, each footstep is far more than a point on the earth. It's a declaration, a commitment to give more than most would give so that you can feel what only a few will feel.

So remember that when things seem trivial, when it's easier to call it a day or turn it around, that the simple act of continuing forward puts you in the minority. It's positioning you to experience life as it should be lived. You're here to both cherish the now and cash it in. Let the value of your courage compound. Let your resilience remind you just how much control you have and how much is waiting for you.

If only you say yes when it hurts, move forward when the path is unclear, believe when the possibility only exists in your head. You're here, because while it may be easier to watch life go by from the cheap seats, the risk, the sacrifice, is worth being able to look back someday down the road, and know that at least you have the courage to play the game.

I'm going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life, Elsie DeWolf. Changing for the better is not about the creation of miracles. It's about choosing to see the ones that already exist. Life is hard, but coincidentally hard things. tend to be the gatekeepers to the important one. We are let in when we bring ourselves finally to shake hands with and embrace the very things we once saw as the problem.

Whereas Ryan Holiday has famously put it, the obstacle tends to be the way. How funny, how counterintuitive, how upside down life can see. But I think that's it. Sometimes it's not even that we're looking at the wrong things. So we're looking at the right things the wrong way. Avoiding the call to step further into the world and deeper into ourselves. Terrified of scraping our knees on the climb, we burden ourselves.

With the much more painful choice of staying at the bottom of the mountain and looking up. But the scars we've collected and will continue to collect on the way up, they do not make you less than. No, they are what make you beautiful. You see yourself and those scars is imperfect. I see someone who has lived, who has taken risks, fallen, and bounced back. I see character and wisdom and elegance and boldness. In an imperfect world, those quote-unquote flaws and scars may, funny enough, just be the closest thing to perfection we'll ever experience.

It's from our courage to step out, our willingness to crack that we flourish. Living necessarily includes a deterioration over time. But a deterioration of the external. Because the internal, the soul, it stays young. It's underneath that forever crumbling world around us that we find the divine. It is because of our scars, not to spite them, that we grow our wings. They aren't to be feared but coveted. You are more because of the mistakes you made, the challenges you face.

The adjustments you had to see. through and I believe our value increases with each tear and break, resembling the Japanese art of Kinsugi, where a pot that breaks and is put back together with golden lacquer holds more value than the original unblemished piece. See, Wolf says, I'm going to make everything around me beautiful. And I think this simply calls for an optical adjustment, a shift in relations between things and how you perceive those things. Me, I don't want the whitest, cleanest, newest shoes. As far as I'm concerned, there's very little beauty to preserve there.

I want shoes with worn souls from the miles and miles. and miles they carried me. Holes from the distance I had to walk to find the people who add joy to my life. Cracks from running in the rain while the rest of the world stayed inside. I want my imperfections to show that I lived while I was here.

So from now on, Let's stop conflating perfect and beautiful. Perfect is no skin in the game. Perfect is standing forever in the doorway looking out. Perfect is dreaming and wishing and hoping, but never leaving. Because leaving is where our vision brushes up against a reality we may see as too big. No. We want to be. not perfect but beautiful. We want scars and flaws and lessons and loss. Because from those things as

difficult as they may be, we're born again. Imperfection is life and life is beautiful. So here's to more scuffed shoes and scrape knees to walking an imperfect yet beautiful road ahead. What you look for in life tends to be what you find. What you believe is usually what you see, which means your existence hinges on where you build your walls. And part of the reason stories, music, movies. move us is because we're allowed, even if it's for a short period of time, to change our parameters on these things, to let the mind navigate through a world without any limitation.

When you think about it, we never fast forward through a movie so that we can quickly check off the box and complete it. We never rush through to move on to the sequel. No, we want to experience it. We want to be overwhelmed by emotion, captivated by excitement lost in the mystery, and then when it's over, we retract, we return to reality. The walls come back up and the rules are reinstated.

And from a 10,000-foot view, you can't help but look at that and wonder if there's more there. Why do we have to retreat to this microcosm of our ideal world where we're not rushed? We can enjoy the moment. Why does it take a dark room and objects depicted on a small screen for us to feel like it's acceptable to step outside of this everyday script? And the question isn't who's enforcing these rules. The answer is always us, it's internal, but the question is why?

Is it incomprehensible that the same excitement be inserted into your world? Is it out of the realm of possibility that the rush of adrenaline, the peak experiences, the laughter, love, twists, and turns be inserted into reality? It's like we choose to be chased through life by ticking clocks and measured by socially constructed checkpoints. But we can move beyond that. Much beyond in those checkpoints. They're just as imaginary as the talking raccoon you set aside three hours to watch last night. So, by the way, you could escape from a man-ufactured reality.

Right, there's a powerful authoritative line that separates our day-to-day from the imagination. And every second is about pushing that back. Never fast-forwarding through life, but making it unlike anything else. Never applying the word mandatory to things that don't warrant the term. We need to think bigger. Working like a madman to build someone else's dream is not mandatory. Enjoying two-sevenths of your life is not mandatory. Being confined to one road when there are infinite paths to travel is not mandatory.

They're components of a bad movie. And my point is not to be ungrateful. It's not to be resentful. It's to remind you that things are the way they are because you've allowed them to be that way. Nothing in life is destined, predetermined, or meant to be. Everything is decided. Life is chosen.

Paths are taken. And sometimes a simple reminder that you have the flexibility to redefine. The rules can make. all the difference. You are entitled to happiness. Every day is a continuation of the extraordinary, not a break from it, and you have to see that. You have to believe that. You're not alive so that you can every so often escape. You're here to feel the imaginary, to challenge the make belief. Our view of the world without a concentrated effort, it's a seems to contract.

And this is a reminder to disallow that, to stop living for the 5% or the 10% and flip that ratio on its head. Now is the time to rewrite your script, recraft your storyline. And if what you look for is what you get, then it's time to see what you've never seen before. What are you willing to endure? Because to become something more is not to react to the world, but to create a new one, yours. As my dad explained to me when I was in grade school, it's taking initiative, seeing what isn't there, what's needed, and then making it happen. And while the setting certainly change, the situation is no longer about helping around the house so I could go to the concert with my friend.

Right now, as we get older, our world seems to get bigger along with us. The stakes are higher. Now it's everything I see when I open the blinds and I look out that window. It's all there. And we can have as little or as much of that as we want. But what we receive will always be directly proportional to what we're willing to endure. To how long we push forward before results arrive. How long we can carry on with the sole goal.

with the sole company of our beliefs. It's about Bezos' packaging and delivering his own books from a garage. Knowing it's not about today, it's about tomorrow if he can just hang on, if he can just endure, it's Tony Robbins with $20 in his bank account, knowing that has no reflection on him or what he's capable of, if he can just hang on,

just keep pushing. It's not that they have the ability to bring their dreams to life. to life a lot of people do they had more they had patience they had the discipline right to remain calm and collected that's nerve-wracking that can be unsettling they had the ability to be focused to remove all the noise around the doubt that stops people before that desired payout is achieved and one of my favorite ways to look at this concept of growth is a little anecdote about lily pads in a pond. And basically it's posed as a question, right?

So the lily pads in this pond double in size every day. And by day 30, the pond is completely covered in lily pads. So then what day is it half covered? That's the question. A lot of people instinctually, they say, oh, okay, day 30, half of 30 is 15. So on day 15, it was half covered, but that's wrong. They're doubling every day, which means the pond wasn't half covered until day 29, and only a quarter covered on day 28.

And the reason that's important is because that means on day 1 through 27. Those lily pads were growing, they were working, they were moving, yet they occupied less than a quarter of that pond. All that work for a result that was barely visible. And then at the very end, the payout becomes exponential, and that's what success is. That's what it means to pursue anything of significance. It's days, months, years of unrecognized work, of marching forward, covering ground when no one knows or cares or believes, except you.

That visualization is your sweet spot, but like we all know, easier said than done, right? This is an incredibly challenging thing because we get impatient and our pride starts to hurt. We become tempted to jump to something different or easier. We don't hang on long enough to hit day 28 or 29 or 30 when things really start to evolve. It's like James Clears metaphor in atomic habits, right, where you have an ice cube sitting in a room and it's freezing and you start slowly shifting the temperature up. You don't see anything going on with the ice cube. Not until you hit that 32 degree mark.

But there are things happening when it goes from 26 to 27 degrees and 27 to 28 and 28 to 29. Those little molecules are moving and bouncing around. But then boom, suddenly it hits that mark and it changes rapidly right in front of you. That's why this single shift in perspective changes everything. It's not about right now. You're doing this for the exponential growth to come. You're believing, you're laying the groundwork. To what I call the overnight success period.

When the world finally recognizes and goes, who is this? Wow, that was quick. They have no idea about, you know, day one through 27. They don't know about the effort and the mental gymnastics. They don't know how many times you had to talk yourself out of quitting or out of rationalizing a day off. They just don't know the road you took to get there, and that's fine. In fact, that's the beauty of it all.

You not only saw it first, but you brought something beautiful to life. By enduring turmoil, by navigating discomfort and chaos, you would become the maker of a new universe. Your universe. Because you stood there because when others would have ran, turned back, you endured. What can you be the best in the world at? Life is a complex place. Complexity sometimes means confusion. It means we forget the big picture.

What's our purpose? What are we chasing? What are we bringing to the world? What can you be the best in the world at? It's a little question I try and ask myself every day because I know if I stay close to it, my decision will have far greater impact. there will be more meaning in life.

See, it pushes away the things that are appealing in the short term, but really don't take us anywhere in the long term. Because one of the coolest aspects of human nature is our ability to illuminate what matters and will mitigate what doesn't. Helps us focus on what's important. We need to go to the grocery store while we step out the front door,

paying attention to nothing but the task at hand, not the objects to our left or right. We don't know what colors the cars were that past, us by or the plants we walked by. We don't think about the blood pumping through our bodies, making it all possible as we walk to the car. We don't even see the car as its metallic components, as it really is. We see it as our portal to a place that has the food. See, we are blind. But at the same time, have this beautiful gift of vision. We see the path right to what's most important. So let's leverage that. And what I think we need to remember is to identify in our

own lives, what that means with regard to our purpose and the context of what we are becoming. See, every day I hear people talk about followers on social media, right? How do I get attention? How do we get noticed? How do I market myself from my brand to the world? How do I stand out? And every time I hear that I always have this little internal reaction, like a voice saying that's just so wrong and so backwards.

You stand out by adding value to the world, by being good at what you do. That's that simple. And so look at it like this. We'll take a specific example. To worry about the marketing and the attention and the followers first is like worrying about the transportation of something you don't have yet or that's incomplete. It's like spending all your time worrying about the logistics of a cargo van and having no idea what that van is going to transport.

Isn't the product the most important thing? And that's the question I ask myself when I'm caught up in something flashy or maybe out of line with my big picture. to make sure I'm on track in this crazy world. If social media disappeared tomorrow, are you good enough at what you do, that you could take that product or service or skill set to another platform and start again?

And if you're not, fine. But are you working towards it? Those are the parameters that we should all live between. Everything else tends to work itself out. Steve Martin's quoted as saying, Be so good they can't ignore you. And that's what I find so exciting, the opportunity, the chance,

to build something sustainable. That's why this is a long-term play. And in a world where so much emphasis is put on perception, what's the reality? What's the story? The pictures are great on the surface, but what's the value that resides below that underneath? What are you working tirelessly day and night to be exceptional at?

What are you leading to build yourself up as a force to be reckoned with? as a powerful, valuable individual. See, my world, a lot of what I do is immersed in social media, which is why it's so important that I remember the perspective that I step out. Social media is not the product. I'm thinking much bigger than that, and I hope you are too, whether it's academics or sports or art. What is your thing?

What's going to be your arena? Where are you unstoppable? Where you add so much value that the world has to stop. We're sure you can capture it on social media, but you can talk about it face to face with clients and family and friends and strangers on the sidewalk. You can write about it, teach about it. Where it's so much a part of you that the phrase competent doesn't even do it justice. That's where greatness lives. Not in screaming for attention or creating a facade.

Those things don't stand the test of time. I'm talking about being truly remarkable. And we all have that ability. We're all capable of mastery in some area moving towards something that matters. We just have to make the choice to own it, to see the world and all its opportunity for what it is. To begin. And what better at time than now? What's the difference between simple and easy?

Well, simple is straightforward, uncomplicated. Easy, on the other hand, means achieved without great effort. The difference between those two words is subtle, but essential to understand. One deals with the complexity of an outcome. The other, your will and determination to achieve that outcome. Becoming who you most want to be is simple. But becoming who you most want to be is not easy. Just like walking is simple, yet hiking up a mountain is not easy.

The procedure didn't change the context did. So let's talk about context. Let's talk about this cyclical nature of growth because it's not that most people can't. It's that most people won't. It's not that most people don't get how. It's that they don't have a strong enough why. The path is laid out before you, you just have to be willing to walk down it. Will you?

Step one, realize there's more out there. It's not that what you're doing now isn't amazing. It's just that yesterday's act of courage is now today's status quo. What was the spectacular is now the mundane. What was once the ceiling you had to jump to touch is now the floor you walk on, so at the very least it prompts you to ask, well, what's next? Simple. Not easy.

Step 2. The Acquisition of Courage. Yesterday's courage was a fight. It took a lot out of you, and it's ultimately what got you here. But it dropped you at the curb, it waved goodbye and went on its merry way, and here you are. You can stay here. A lot of people do. You can reminisce of the glory days, the old path, yesterday's triumphs. Or you can do that perpetually uncomfortable exercise of vulnerability. Stepping into tomorrow's unknown, reminding yourself that life's greatest rewards have a hefty price tag and that price is discomfort.

But I've already played this game, one might think. No, what you did was learn the rules. Now it's time to apply them to a new setting, and around goes the merry-go-round. It might seem like a replication from the horizontal, but here's the secret. You can't see the vertical. You have yet to look down and see your ascent, see what you're becoming. Just by staying on, holding tight, just by believing in yourself enough to begin again, you are fanning those tiny flames of courage in your soul that wait to be spread like a wildfire.

Simple, but not easy. Step three, mistakes. Now, of course, it's not the mistakes themselves, you fear. It's what you think those mistakes will mean. Ridicule, embarrassment, lack of direction, or identity, losing what you think. have, but here's the catch. When you realize the upside is greater than the downside, you liberate yourself. When you realize there's more to gain than to lose, your potential for greatness is born.

How does one act on this? Mistakes. By making mistakes, by injecting yourself into the turbulence of progress. Our biology has not yet learned that the uncomfortable thing is the right thing, and that's That's why you get resistance. That's why it hurts. And it's why few people will accomplish what you will. When it comes to your climb, every day is opposite day.

When they run out, you're running in. When they play safe, you play for the victory. To become who you might be, you must learn how to get there. Mistakes are your curriculum. Simple, but not easy. Step four, trust yourself. Okay, sure, no problem, easy. Well, yeah, it's easy when you're getting what you want.

But evolution takes time, and there's nothing quite like giving and giving and giving and not getting. There's nothing quite like stepping up to the plate again and again and again and bringing no runners home. So how does one find the strength to continue walking up to the batter's box? Well, growth is exponential, and those swings and misses matter. The infield singles matter. everything matters because it's all chiseling your future self out of stone.

Nothing is dependent on the next at bat as much as all at bat in the aggregate. That's why success is so often considered to be sheer will, dependent not on the home run, but on the discipline, the self-belief to keep walking up to the plate. Repetition and adjustment. Repeat and refine, repeat, refine. are the materials from which all things are made. Simple, but not easy. And then we have the finale. The ending, Step 5. Celebrate and adjust. At some point you'll be able to look over your shoulder and notice something that perhaps you hadn't before. Space, space between where you

are and where you started. It's not sudden, but gradual. And undoubtedly, with enough persistence, it will emerge. These moments, they are precious. They are times to acknowledge what you've accomplished, the sacrifices you have made. They are life's way of reminding you what you are building and who you are becoming. It's a time of celebration. Every little win means something. Every small victory matters, so relish in it. And then transform it. Normalize it. Recognize that That mountain top is your foundation now. Your starting point has changed and so have you, which means so have your expectations. With an increase in ability comes an upgrade to what's possible, what's expected.

And look at that. We have arrived at a new step one. Realize there is more. This is the process for capturing that which life has to offer. If you can fall in love with that, appreciate it, respect it, while simultaneously understanding it's not scary, it's dependent entirely on your ability to push forward. If you can understand that, there is nothing you can't do. Nowhere you can't go.

Simple, yes, easy, no. But you're not in this for easy. You're in it for the journey, the growth, the adventure. or your in it because it's not easy. You'll see in time as will the world that this decision to endure was simply the best one you ever made. Sometimes when you don't know where you're going,

the best thing to do is go there. A wise man once stated that an object at rest stays at rest. And while his rationale was a little different, than mine, I'm gonna borrow from his premise. Right? Because when you move, even if you don't know where you're going, you put yourself on a collision course with something. You put into existence an entity to react to.

Some call it destiny. Others call it fate. I call it simply initiative. Because if you're just, Your journey is hypothetical. You have nothing to celebrate nor correct. A sailboat can adjust its sails once it leaves the harbor, right? It can learn from and manipulate its surroundings.

Make sure it arrives at a destination, right? It learns and adapts along the way. But from the harbor it speculates. It expounds upon a path that might be straighter, might be faster, might be more thought out and tied together than the crazy sea. sailors who took off for the horizon, but in actuality, it goes nowhere. In the real world, it is stagnant, and I could be wrong, but I'd make the argument ten out of ten times that the real world is where we want our result.

And my proof? Well, a journey that started with insurance and evolved into music, in songwriting, in audio production, then video production, and creative writing, then a sweet spot that kind of kind of combined everything, a spot that didn't make its way to my inbox with an exact address. A spot that required a lot of failure and lessons learned and disappointment, but man, more than that, so much fun. My proof is sitting down right now in real time, letting my fingers create a bridge from nothing to something of value. By the way, after sitting here staring at a blank screen for hours, It's just starting.

Could I be wrong? Could I screw up? Could I wildly miss the mark? Yes. In fact, it happens more than I'd like to admit. But here's the beauty, even if I am wrong. I now have something to work with. Something has been brought into existence.

And well, that means I'm officially further along than I once was. And I've heard over and over again that there is no perfect moment. that you have to just go and the idea I mean it makes sense it's impossible not to understand but it's one of those things that until you feel it

doesn't mean anything how can you miss something you've never experienced well to put it in a way that help me understand you aren't going because what do you have to lose you're going

because everything is to be gained the answers that you pick up along the way, like a little coins you pick up in Super Mario, right? You have to start collecting pieces of a puzzle that you can then arrange. I truly believe that one of the most important ideas we need to hold on to moving forward as personal agency, self-belief.

And I say that because I feel like I'm watching it slip. There are cases where we literally don't know or understand that it's within our own ability and control to change our lives. No person or group or letter in the mail is going to come along and green light your idea. In fact, you might not even really know what your idea means or how it will look.

And that's not only okay. It's amazing. It's the marble that you get to chisel away at to create something. See, life is not the perfect execution of a plan. Life is the courage to make your way into a world that no one really understands or knows anything about. And I'm not talking physics or biology or quantum mechanics. I'm talking about the real life that is emergent from those areas of study, right? There is no perfect

formula for happiness. But it will always be true that immobility or standing still is antithetical to progress. And there is plenty of data that supports the idea. Progress equals happiness. We want to move towards something. So that's what this is about. Here's to not being scared of what we don't know. Because somewhere in the realm of what we don't know exists what we need most. So yeah, stop waiting for the perfect moment. And yes, begin. But not because it's an ultimatum. Do it because the things that make life fun and intriguing and exciting and ultimately worthwhile, they live on the other side of your front door. In John Maxwell's book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, he talks about momentum.

And how the saying, if you can't take the heat, then get out of the kitchen, doesn't quite, quite get it right, advocating that it should instead be if you can't create the heat, then get out of the kitchen. And being that we are all leaders in our own lives, I think he hits on something that none of us should overlook. The power of momentum, of not waiting but creating, reminding ourselves that we are not spectators, sitting in the stands and simply reacting to or complaining about the events taking place below. No, we have the ability to change the things we do not like and create the ones that don't yet exist when we know they should.

Too much of the time we react to that metaphorical heat in the kitchen, as John alludes to, forgetting that we can dial it up or down. We're not only characters that have been created. We are ourselves creators. And I talk a lot about mental shifts that have changed my life and there are plenty. But perhaps the most important was the realization that I can do something about the things I don't like. And I know that sounds simple, probably even obvious. But I look back at various stages of my life and I'm blown away by the amount of things I tolerated for years and years. years simply because I gave it no thought. There were so many questions that I never asked,

so many opportunities I never explored, until I realized, hey, you can stop accepting those things you don't want. It's amazing the power of a simple list that was created, two columns, left side, all the things that bothered me that I wasn't happy with, or that I knew should be there that have been lacking. And then on the right column, what I'm going to do about it, every single item. Each one, what's the step I'm going to take? And I just poured my heart onto that paper, and it's like you look down and feel like you have finally moved into the driver's seat.

There's something incredible about knowing that you have taken control, something satisfying, knowing that you're not just accepting what falls out of sky and lands in your hands, especially since we seem to have this proclivity to box ourselves in. Human beings are amazing in their ability to adapt, but the danger is when we adapt to and normalize a reality that falls short of what matters to us. The danger is in forgetting that nothing happens without momentum, and momentum is self-made. One of my favorite stories is about a man walking through the circus. And he sees these enormous elephants, each with one end of a rope, tied around one of their legs,

and the other end of that rope connected to a chair. The man, as he's walking by, he's curious, asked one of the trainers, Hey, isn't that dangerous? Couldn't the elephant easily break free and get away if he wanted? And the trainer says, no. See, we started doing this when they were baby elephants. elephants. And when they were babies, they couldn't physically break free. They weren't strong enough. And so over the years, as they grew and became bigger, stronger, it never dawned on them that

by simply pulling on that rope or walking away, they could break free. These chains might as well be invisible. And that's what they were. Mental. The rope wasn't keeping the elephants to the the elephants were keeping the elephants to the chair. And there's something there in that message for all of us. For some of us in this particular moment, maybe it's big picture. For others, maybe we're at a season of life where it's simply creating momentum in some type of smaller capacity. And I travel through these ups and downs personally all the time.

I think that's a healthy thing. It's a sign that you're looking for. that growth. You're checking the world around you for those imaginary ropes. Recently I went through a period where I just felt too long had gone by without something significant happening. I needed to create momentum. And so I asked, well, who was I reaching out to? How was I pushing myself? What was I doing that scared me? What was I doing that was growing? How could I take things up a level? All these little levers of opportunity are all around us, but we have to know to look for them, to see them and pull.

And it's truly an incredible thing. You do that, and you start to feel the movement underneath you, the momentum, the excitement, because you're trying new things, you're taking new risks, talking to new people. And that's how that snowball grows. We have to realize that we are mighty big elephants, perpetually tied to these comically small chairs. We have to create that heat in the kitchen

because we're not only capable, we are ready. We are equipped to move forward. See, the moment is never going to be perfect. The momentum will never come to be on its own. Those things wait. They wait for you to stop watching, like, go by and click start on the stopwatch. Yeah, time has always ticked away, but it will never mean as much as it's about to now.

Tick, talk, whispers the opportunity. Signifying that in order to evolve, we must decide we are bold enough to go where we have not yet gone and strong enough to leave some things behind. to choose to accept some discomfort in its impermanence, instead of a regret that is forever. And that's a trade that demands we look into the future and find value in the unseen. It's a move that says the seconds ticking by

mean too much to dishonor them by not making the most of what's around you. And those answers are always there. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. We make decisions without even realizing we're making them. To accept the current moment as fate is to choose what you're given over what is possible, over everything that's out there available for you. It's never too late to pull on that rope around your foot.

To be who you, as the saying goes, might have been. Know that in your world, nothing consistently shows up or exists without your stamp of approval. That will always be true. Nothing carries on without you allowing it to do so. And that understanding will be the difference between the ground level and the exponential heights you are capable of reach. The creation, the email, the phone call, the ride, the book, the period of time, the standard. step out the door, any and all of life's seemingly unremarkable characteristics. Within them is your ticket to greatness.

Just know that you have to be the one that winds the clock. You are the sun around which everything else revolves, the architect that makes something of value from them. There will always be momentum where you disson decide there should be momentum. So pick your head up, open the door, and step out into the world of potential that await. What is the complex, but an accumulation of that which is simple? What are big things, if not just a multitude, of little things?

There's comfort in the understanding that all we have in life, all there is, is simplicity. easy to understand pieces. It's just that sometimes we stack them so high that they start to take a new shape. But like Greg McKeown references in his book Essentialism, the power isn't always in acquiring answers. You already have them. They're in front of you.

The power is in cutting away the things that don't need, removing all that stands between you and your ideal existence. And I think that's one of life's great misunderstandings. We don't need to find more. We need to remove the excess until we're face to face with what matters. And to adopt this principle, it's nothing short of liberating. Chaos, confusion, disorder. They don't imply that you lack the right things.

They suggest you haven't stripped life of the wrong things. You have not simplified. A thousand miles is intimidating when you look at it holistically. It's a long journey. But it's just a collection of steps and well, shouldn't we find solace in the fact that anyone can take one step? It's not a game of complexity. It's a game of understanding what's in front of you.

what's in front of you is always manageable. So much of our stress stems from forgetting what that journey is made of. Whether it's a change in career, mastery of an art, some kind of personal transformation, the result we want. When looking at it from the starting line, it's too complex to understand too many pieces stacked up. So let's break it down. find the foundation. What's really there? What are the one, two, three things we need to do?

What is that golden question? What matters? If you lose sight of that, then you will stumble through life. I've learned this. I've lived it. The time I take to myself every day is invaluable to me because I ask myself those two questions, what matter and what are the simple steps I need? to take. What can I remove? I was talking about this during an interview this week, my personal growth. And one of the most important aspects has been the understanding and zeroing in on what's important. I used to take so much pride in composing the background music to these speeches, end-to-end. I used to love to be able to say I did it all. That was so I thought the great differentiator. But ultimately I learned to take a step back and ask what matters here.

What do you care about? It's the storytelling that I love. It's the impact. And let's be real. No one cares who wrote the background music. It's holistically, how does the piece make you feel? Right? And this understanding allowed me to cut away.

License the music. Save two days a week, acquire clarity. And realize my goal is not to be Mozart. My journey is to be one of the great communicators, storytellers of our time, and if a day goes by where I'm not taking a little step towards that, it's the wrong move. Small example in the grand scheme of things, but right on point. It's the power in understanding what matters that makes a difference

that allows you to grow, evolve. And I'm confident that this not only applies to long-term pursuits, but also our challenging times, the dark moments, the periods of uncertainty and discontent. Same concept. Where do you want to be? And how do you get there? What's the simple thing you can do to close that gap? Because you are never helpless.

You can always do something. And my friends, those little somethings ultimately evolve into everything. And when we put our phone away, step beyond the noise, spend time with ourselves, we can see how much of life is running in place. Stacking and stacking pieces that aren't even part of the masterpiece we're trying to assemble. If you want answers, start with the understanding that they're buried under mountains of things you don't need. So cut away. Cut away the people and places and things that convolut your story. Cut away the exhaustion of time that provides no value in return.

Cut away the thoughts that make life more complex than your journey from where you are to where you'd like to be. As you stand right now, you have everything you need, and there's nothing greater than that, nothing more powerful. than that understanding. So why not step outside the complexity that you've manufactured that you're living in into a world of clarity,

simplicity, and capture what matters.