Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - DON'T LOSE FOCUS | Powerful Motivational Speeches

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Momentum is fragile—it takes time to build but only a moment of neglect to fade. One missed alarm, one excuse, and suddenly what was effortless feels like climbing a mountain barefoot. And in that struggle, doubt creeps in. “Was I ever that person? Do I still have it in me?”Your mind doesn’t fight for your potential—it fights for comfort. It builds walls, convincing you that safety is enough. But excellence isn’t given; it’s a choice. Society rewards blending in, but true growth comes from stepping back into the fire. The question isn’t if you’re capable—it’s if you’re willing.More from Eddie Pinero:Monday Motivation Newsletter: https://www.eddiepinero.com/newsletterYour World Within Podcast: https://yourworldwithin.libsyn.com/Stream these tracks on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2BLf6pBInstagram - @your_world_within and @IamEddiePineroTikTok - your_world_withinFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/YourworldwithinTwitter - https://www.twitter.com/IamEddiePineroBusiness Inquiries - http://www.yourworldwithin.com/contact#liveinspired #yourworldwithin #motivation

Every once in a while, there's a point where you're looking in the mirror, and you realize you've let go of the rope. You were climbing, you were ascending, and, you know, moving on to bigger, better, faster, all the things. But then, life happened. Maybe you were traveling, you know, there's disruption, you get sick. You sleep in, right? Hit that alarm clock or that snooze button, and you tell yourself,

just as once. But I think we've been there when once becomes twice, twice becomes three times, suddenly what was second nature now feels like you're climbing a mountain barefoot. Momentum is a lot like fire. It takes time to build, an effort to cultivate. Energy to sustain, but only a moment of neglect to flicker out, right? And once that darkness settles in, you start asking yourself all the wrong questions. Well, what's the point?

What if I don't have it in me anymore? Do I even have to live like that? What if I was really never that person to begin with? Because the mind is funny like that. It doesn't fight for your potential. It fights for comfort. It wants to take that temporary stumble and build it into a home. It wants to consistently build walls around you.

In fact, I would go as far as to say, you know, there's dissonance between where your heart wants to go, where your soul wants to take you, and where some of the most precious things in life are directing you. Your biology wants you safe. It doesn't need you pushing your limits or maxing out your potential.

Societally, it's much easier to blend in, to be average. Even friends and family, the ones that love us most, right? There's innately interest in their part on you being safe and secure, which is fine. But all these things lead you to a status quo, not excellence. Excellence in my eyes is something that is derived from the self. It's a journey that you have to green light.

And so where am I going with this? Well, I'm just coming out of a, we'll say less than ideal stretch. It's not a remarkable story. It's not going to knock your socks off, but I think you'll find it relatable, right? Where a few weeks ago, everything was firing on all cylinders. In, I want to say all aspects of life, right? In rhythm, dialed in, early mornings, deep work, hitting the gym,

spending time with people I care about, all things good, right? Had my hands on the wheel. And then something so small, so seemingly insignificant, knocked me off course. Some type of respiratory virus. nothing serious enough to keep me in bed for a few days but in that time your discipline, focus, habits, all those things you sort of have to fight to cultivate, they can go out the window, they're allowed to unwind

because you're telling yourself you'll get back on track and you need this, right? You deserve this, you work hard, right? So the symptoms go away after three days, but energy's a little bit down and you're looking at the gym and you're going, You need the rest. You're looking at those creative ideas.

All they can wait. You start sleeping in, start hitting the snooze button. And essentially an active choice to recover becomes an unconscious choice to retreat. At some point, you're not healing anymore. You're hiding. And you feel it, right? Just in your bones, there's less excitement,

there's less energy. You sort of know you're lying to yourself and not keeping the word that you gave to yourself. It's a bad feeling. You start to internalize that. People follow through and will they believe themselves to be. That's why every step is so important. It's earning that confidence. It's reaffirming that commitment. And without that, life just feels like it's missing something. And so this morning, a very intentional walk outside changed everything. And I know that's anticlimactic. I know it sounds trivial. Good. That is the point. It's so. easy to turn things around, right? But, as Jim Rohn has said, it's also very easy to continue the same pattern and same habits. That's why it's so hard to change.

Not because change is hard, but because staying the same is so damn easy. But here's the message. Here's what I needed. And here's what I'd love to offer up to you. In case you find yourself in one of these slumps or maybe just not firing on all cylinders. That chapter of life or season where you know you're leaving a part of you on the table.

Here it is. Life is not about perfection. It's about returning. Our innate ability to rise from the ashes. Like a tide returns to shore or the sun rises no matter how long the light lingers. Like a song finding its melody after the notes have scattered. It was all there. It was never broken.

The pieces existed. You just happen to step away from that fire for too long, but fires, they don't permanently die. They just need tending to. So wherever you are, you don't need to rebuild the castle. No, at least not today. And that's important to understand. That's important to know.

Because if you convince yourself you have to leap a mile, you'll get discouraged, and you'll quit. It's a longevity game. You need to pick up the first stone. That's the beauty of momentum. It doesn't ask for everything at once. Just one step, one action, one promise kept. And perhaps this is me standing at the bottom of the mountain again.

Looking at that summit as it feels so far away, my legs may be a little weaker than they were two weeks ago. But I know how the story goes. I've been here before. And every great comeback. From the small, seemingly trivial, all the way up to tasks as grandiose as the mind can imagine. imagine, they all start the same way.

They start with choosing. The answer you're looking for is right there in the room, always. Now, that's certainly a bold statement. And as I've gotten older, I've kind of learned to avoid speaking in absolutes. Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. So why am I so confident about that message? Everything you need is right there in the room always. Well, because I believe in the premise,

you're always one decision away from a totally different life. And when we're stuck or lost or looking for change, we need not some crazy, grandiose answer to be delivered from the heavens. We need to find the little action, the tiny movement that's going to set us forth on the journey. We need this snowflake that will become this snowball that will become the avalanche. It seems like so much of life comes down to simply outsmarting our biology. It's like the panic or the emotive defense mechanisms that come into play

when we're sad or lost or feeling unsure or down. And it's an absolute superpower to know that when we're in those moments, what we need is an arm's length away. It's a perspective shift away. And I look over my shoulder and I see tons of examples here, right? With my keynote speaking, there was a period where it just wasn't quite clicking, where I knew I wasn't performing the way I could. And I was going back and forth on solutions, trying different things, experimenting,

not quite getting there, feeling overwhelmed. It's like, why can I recreate there what I'm doing here? And then one email to the person who's now my speaking coach, and I had my light bulb moments. Like everything started to transform. Or my YouTube channel, right? It's up, down, up, down, everything in between. And like I've said before, there are times where a simple thumbnail change. And that video explodes, causing the channel to explode.

That's not a big grandiose thing. I can always change a thumbnail. That answer is sitting in the palm of my hand. with my phone. Or an example that falls on the more human side of things, right? There are times where, you know, I felt like I've neglected the relationships in my life in order to really focus on my creativity and my businesses.

Sometimes that, you know, mentally doesn't feel good. And I can pick up the phone, start a group chat, plan a dinner with some friends, and feel like my cup has been refilled. Right? It's like you don't have to have to have. it all figured out. Which is great news because you never will. You just need to start creating momentum. There's nothing more powerful than going to bed at night feeling like you are moving

towards something meaningful. Again, doesn't mean you need to have it all figured out, but in a world where progress largely equates to happiness, it means you are actively manufacturing momentum. That's everything. You know, I often think of my friend's son, Wyatt. He's become sort of a metaphor for that childlike instinct that seems to be the answer for so much. Right? He's wandering around the living room, just reusing everything as it suits him.

The world is not as it, quote unquote, is, it's as he sees it. Picks up a TV remote, becomes a microphone. Finds a blanket, becomes the roof for the fort he's building, in the living room. Everything is a solution to what he needs. Everything is a color that can go on his canvas. I think that's the place we need to be. That's the idea. The next brush stroke is in the room. Maybe it's a phone call, an email. Maybe it's a walk outside, a stroll to the gym. Maybe it's literally cleaning your room, your apartment, or a house. Maybe it's one social media post. Maybe it's a DM.

Maybe it's 10 pages of a book. Maybe it's watching a how-to YouTube video. Maybe it's signing up for a class, meeting up with someone to talk business, life, or anything in between. See, we spend so much time trying to get to the moon that we overlook the staircase it'll take to get there. Oh, and surprise, step one is at your feet. Don't think miracle.

Think momentum. It's very hard to slow down an object in motion. So stop beating yourself up for not having all the answers and simply keep moving. Don't feel down for not having all the solutions and be proud you're walking towards them. Remember, everything you need is in the room, always. 90 seconds is too much. It just is. I can't do 90 seconds.

And I can't do 90 seconds because my brain can't compute 90 seconds, but I can do 30 seconds. And I can do 30 seconds forever. As we navigate our day-to-day, it's hard to see that because so often our day-to-day lacks clarity. So what can we do about it? Well, we can place ourselves in situations where we are reminded. One of them, I've talked about before, being the cold plunge, immersing yourself in cold water. Well, sure, there are health benefits, some of which are debated and disputed, but I certainly notice value in that department. But to me, that's not the biggest value at, not even close.

To me, it's simply the daily reminder that I can do hard things, that it's who I am. We need to reestablish that consistently. Confidence is earned. And I know in my life I must earn it repeatedly. And when I'm immersed in the cold and shivering, there's always a point in my mind, however brief, that I'm thinking I want out now. The other day, I was at this point, looked at my watch, 90 seconds left.

And that day in that moment, it felt like an eternity. Just too much. And those of you who are endurance athletes, for example, you know that when your body's operating at max capacity, you're suffering, you're exhausted. 90 seconds is truly a lifetime. When you look at it like that, it's too much discomfort for a minute and a half.

Your heart starts beating, your mind starts worrying, right? So what do we do about it? We look at it a little differently. Because from a different angle, you can skip it. You can do 30 seconds. The brain can grasp and digest 30 seconds. You can do anything for 30 seconds. So you start counting.

All of a sudden, 30 gone. Now what? Well, you just did 30. You see how quick that went? Do another 30. Okay. Done. Just like that.

Now what? 30 more. But this is the last 30. You don't even feel anything on the last 30, right? Come on. Adrenaline's going. You can feel the finish line. This is free time.

This is a gift. This is cruise control. And now you didn't have to do 90 seconds. You only had to do 3 by 30. And anyone's saying, come on, man, that's the same thing. Yeah, it's the same when you're not under duress. But it's a miracle when you are. So why is running life? Why is cold plunging?

Life. Why is putting your body through stress or difficulty life? Because you remember that life is taking big, difficult, seemingly complex things and breaking them down into manageable tasks. That is life. The pieces are always manageable. Now, the monster we allow the pieces to become when we stack them up and give them an invisible face, that's not so manageable. That's self-sabotage. So to arm yourself with the understanding that all big things must be broken down is to green light the extraordinary. On day one in 2014, a YouTube channel with zero subscribers growing to help over 100,000 people a day. That's a 90 second. cold plunge. That's unfathomable, unthinkable, impossible. But one video weekly, at least for nine

years, that's a 30 second cold. Standing in front of the mirror, practicing storytelling, speaking, it's 30 seconds. Reaching out to others to learn to get better 30 seconds in cold water. It's like you look back and you see that you in endured that 90-second plunge simply by breaking it down. That's all growth is. That's all evolution is. Finding the smallest piece possible in making it actionable. And then watching that transform multiply, compound over time.

In one of my favorite books, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, this reminder comes through beautiful. Louis Zamperini, an American prisoner of war in Japanese internment camps during World War II. He basically experiences unimaginable hell and suffering. He watches his friends die, he's beaten, he's starved, he comes close to death himself, and at the end when he's rescued, and I'm paraphrasing, but I remember this part incredibly vividly, He's asked if he could do that again, and he states he'd rather die. He's turning around and viewing it holistically like that is too much.

It's unfathomable. That pain is bigger than one can even comprehend. But taking something like that, day by day, step by step, he did the unthinkable. He survived. In breaking the 90-second task down into 30-second pieces, he walked away, in breaking the seemingly insurmountable down into the manageable, and looking at each individual step as a superpower he emerged. You talk about perspective.

His experience was as challenging as it gets. My cold plunge is laughable in comparison. but my mind doesn't know that. It's up to me to reinforce it. Building a business is nothing in comparison to Louise Amperini, but my mind doesn't know that. Healing my shoulder and getting stronger in the gym is nothing in comparison, but my mind does not know that.

It's looking at the mountain and reminding myself, Eddie, you can't leap those. I've seen you jump, buddy. But the good news is, no mountains need be left here. We ascend this thing one rock at a time, and mark my words, you conquer those manageable tasks day in and day out. You will find yourself. So when you feel stuck or too small for the task at hand,

remind yourself, you're looking at a 90-second block here. Break that down. Ask yourself what your 30 is. Ask yourself what you can create that's manageable. It will create your momentum. That will shoot you into a trajectory. It will allow growth and position you someday to look back over your shoulder and go, wow, I endured all that. A transformation too big to understand on day one. It's a beautiful thing watching all those little steps add up to create the extraordinary. loved or be hated, but never simply tolerated.

In life, you can live to chase opportunity, or you can live to avoid failure. And there are two very different things. Rather than pursue, we often avoid, we avoid failure, we avoid criticism, we don't wanna ruffle feathers or disrupt, no, we choose to simply exist. Never condemned, but never extraordinary. Just tolerated.

And it's an interesting dilemma. Because the best things exist on the extremes. Life's fringes. That's where you find your accolades, your accomplishments. That's what we celebrate. It's where you need to be. And you get there not by worrying about what everyone around you thinks, but by taking your strength, your unique self holding on and pressing the pedal to the floor going all in.

And yeah, that means suddenly, my friend, you are exposed. You are vulnerable, you are now out there. It means those who don't have the courage to chase their dreams, they will find you threatening, and they will let you know. But it also means that the shackles are off. The door is open, the light is green, and you can build from the ground up, you can build the life you want. The finish line has now become more visible than the prospect of falling along the way, and you've granted yourself permission to run through it. Sure, some will love you for these accomplishments, some will hate you for these accomplishments,

but let me reiterate the word accomplishment. Because when you live to be invisible, it's a term that rarely presents itself, I promise. Life, it rewards the bold. Those who are bold in their beliefs, bold in their actions, their dreams, and their pursuits. They are not for anyone but you. And years later, when you look in the mirror, you'll know that you gave every single thing you had to a life that meant something to you. Loved, yes, hated, sure, but merely tolerated, no. You know, one of the hardest things to do is to walk away from a situation that's just okay.

That's fine, it's doable, livable. There's an idea that the enemy of great isn't it's inverse. The enemy of great is not average or insignificant or, I don't know, throw in any similar No, the enemy of great is good. Why? Because it's incredibly easy to rationalize good. It's incredibly easy to sit back and tell yourself, hey, things aren't currently broken, so why touch them, leave it alone.

It's why it's a dangerous place to be. Comfort doesn't, on its own, initiate action or evolution. There has to be some sort of stressor to ignite the flame. And I'll get a response, you know, every now and then, truly in good faith, asking, well, what's wrong with average? Why can't I just be? Not everyone can be LeBron James or Adele or Denzel Washington. Eddie, this convo sends people down a path of false hope.

Well, hear me out. Because I'm certainly not saying everyone can be LeBron James. but they can most definitely be LeBron James in their own world and instead are settling for some sort of bench roll. I'm not saying if you're not a movie star making $20 million a film you've lost. I'm merely pointing out that perhaps you haven't even found the courage to star in your own movie, the one that is your life. And I can't speak for every human being.

on the planet here, but I most certainly can speak for myself. The easiest thing for me, the temptation I always find myself grappling with, is the temptation to stay where I am. To accept things as they are, pass change off as something that's just a little bit out of my control. That's what my lizard brain always seems to want. It's really nice to not have to feel the burden of knowing I can change things around me. right, that prospect of creating my own friction, my own chaos, so that I can, in a sense, tame it and elevate myself, that can be overwhelming. That's stressful. But you know what it is at the end of the day? It's thrilling. It's meaningful. And it may have taken me years to understand, but I'd trade a safe life for a meaningful one any day. It was my coming to understand that statistically, we're going to be a safe life for a meaningful one any day. It was my coming to understand that statistically we should not be here.

The odds are so small that you're alive listening to this, that the word improbability doesn't do it justice. It's a miracle in every sense of the word, and so what do we do about that? How do you explain a feeling? How do you explain the cost of not going, of fewer sunrises, less laughter, untapped creativity, unwacked paths, journeys never started, you can't. Which is why you have to go.

Good is not detrimental because it's insufficient. It's detrimental because it gives you just enough to make stepping out into the world feel illogical. It's a warm blanket keeping you comfortable enough to forfeit that feeling you truly. truly crave. And I hope it's clear. My take in this is not that we aren't enough. It's that we have to be reminded that our biological compass points towards survival. And survival is a game of stagnation. Our souls, on the other hand, they need to run. To seek out the magnificence of life. And the more times we can be tapped on the shoulder and reminded of this, the better. See, I don't dream of new horizons because I'm ungrateful.

I've learned to chase them down because I'm so grateful that I refuse to forfeit the gift. To leave my curiosity packaged and confined, I want to bask in life's abundance before my time here is up. And that's just it. That's the whole point The friction between the knowing and the doing Making that happen Physically bringing yourself there

It's not an easy thing Certainly not as easy as putting your feet up And rationalizing the status quo It's why I listen to voices that inspire me Read stories that teach me I talk to people who lift me up Going is harder than staying but meaning resides in the going.

So no, it's not about being LeBron James. It's about getting off the bench and at least shooting a shot. Whatever a shot means to you, wherever you are. Because if you don't, you'll never experience the thrill of having made one, of having felt that success. It's not about what you're doing. what you're leaving on the table. Is average terrible?

I don't know. Is a Ferrari never taken out of its garage terrible? Not really, it's still a Ferrari, but it won't experience the very thing that Ferrari was designed to experience. Again, how do you quantify that? You can't. Not until you go.

So here's the stepping. out of whatever the present definition of normalcy is in your world. Maybe not frantically changing the world around you, but certainly questioning the good, questioning yourself, questioning the Rojuran. Has the routine overshadowed the reason you put the routine into place? Has the way things are come to outweigh the way you'd like them to be? has good become a distraction

misdirecting you away from both life's brilliance and your own Marcus Aurelius once said it's not death that men should fear but he should fear never beginning to live and so

there's the obvious question what does it mean to truly live to live one's life to the fullest I don't think that's a one size fits all question. I think we all want different things. I think an ideal reality is different for every single one of us,

but I do believe across the board, everyone should be looking around and reflecting and asking what matters to me, and am I living in a way conducive to that? Am I positioning myself for that life? Or conversely, have I built walls? Am I doing things just to do them? Have I confined myself to a world of limitation? That is the question.

On a recent podcast, Ryan Holliday said something on the topic that I thought was pretty profound. He said, amateurs are obsessed with tools. Referring to productivity stuff. He was chatting with productivity YouTuber. And it's like, okay, well, why is that concerning? Right? To be obsessed with tools. schools. And it's concerning, as he explains, because they are seeking to optimize the things that

they're not even doing, which is a great way to never get there. He kind of elaborated that obsessing about productivity is a form of procrastination. We worry too much about constructing that perfect path. There is no perfect path. And that friction, that resistance or procrastination is just fear in disguise. The journey is the marble from which you chip away at excellence. You don't need a perfect path. You need to go. You need to point the compass in a general direction and begin.

The crazy, chaotic, unpredictable variables of life are what we use to build. I think Mike Tyson nailed it when he said everyone has a plan until they get punched in mouth, right? Life is unpredictable. It's messy. It's not a perfection game. It's an adjustment game. And the ones who can get hit and bounce back will move exponentially further than the ones seeking to create some perfection before they leave their front door. And so the question is, do you have that strength to simply push into the night? Because this counterintuitive as it may seem, on the other side exists the dawn. As Marcus Aurelius suggests, that life we are meant to live exists beyond the haze. Now, two things can obviously be true at once.

I'm not saying preparation is the enemy here. Preparation is certainly a huge factor when determining something's outcome or success. But there comes a time where you have to be honest with yourself. You have to realize you can't plan your way to greatness. You're worried to walk into the chaos. That's all. You're worried about skinning your knees because let's be real. It's way easier to sit inside on a couch and plan how to trudge through the mud than to actually go out and do it. And as it turns out, it is the ladder piece that makes all the difference. The latter piece is life. The trudging, the pushing, the finding away.

It may seem unnecessary or avoidable even from the confines of that living room, looking out at the world through your window, but the courage to go is the cost of admission. It's the thinker versus the doer metaphor, right? By the time the thinker has acted, the doer is long gone, 1,000 feet ahead. They've made their mistakes. They've learned.

They've collected data. They're planning in real time as their feet move. That's life as it was meant to be lived. And believe it or not, that's the rubric by which we'll actually judge ourselves. Did I have the courage to do the things that matter? You know those situations we all come across them where you're kind of kicking yourself, for not doing something that was just a little uncomfortable. Your heart, your soul was trying to push you there,

but you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Maybe speaking in class, proposing something at work, asking someone out, submitting something online, whatever it may be, the ship came and it went. And you were there from the dock, watching it sail away, annoyed, because you know in your gut you wanted to do it. You should have done it.

you were called to do it. We'll take that feeling and bottle it up. Multiply it by whatever number you think is sufficient for someone at the end of life in their 80s or 90s looking back at all those times they didn't act. Reflecting back on all those ships that they had to watch sail away. Why? Because they were waiting for perfect. They waited so long and so desperately for perfection that life slipped. away. That's a pain I never want to feel. That moment is the true grim reaper. It's not death we are running from. It is the possibility that we were given all of this and we let it slip away.

So point your compass and go. You won't feel ready. It certainly won't feel perfect, but it will position you for growth. It will give you something. And something. is the beginning of everything. The world reflects back at us what we currently are, like a giant mirror projecting the movie that's playing in our heads. We lay on the horn in traffic, not when we're at peace with ourselves, but when we're in duress. We gravitate towards the negative,

not when we're living in abundance, but when we're living in scarcity. We quit, retreat, contract, not when we're confident in the road ahead, but when we're doubtful, alarmed. In other words, we find out in the world what already lives within us. Life in many ways is not absolute. It's evidence. It's evidence that we'll use to justify the things we already believe. Wayne Dyer used to use the metaphor of an orange.

It can be squeezed and squeezed. and squeezed, but there will never be grapefruit juice pouring out of an orange. No, grapefruit juice doesn't live there. You can only find on the outside what lives in the inside. You can only extract from the orange orange juice. Recently a good friend of mine said to me that they'd like to change their financial situation. To which my response was perfect, you most certainly. can, right? Like anything, yeah, it'll take work and some planning and some restructuring,

all that good stuff, but you most definitely can. And his response was, sure, that's what all you motivational people say. Okay, smart guy. Now you're an example on a podcast episode. Congrats. Why? Because you want the people around you to realize how much is possible for themselves, right? It's not sorcery or witchcraft to believe something better as possible. In fact, if one doesn't believe it's possible, they're effectively cementing their feet to the ground, at least with regard to that particular pursuit. Let's face it, you don't begin journeys that are not possible. We don't allow ourselves to do that. And so, to not believe in an outcome and somehow still wish for that outcome, well, that's essentially our orange metaphor.

Can't squeeze financial freedom out of a mindset that only sees monetary constraint. believing it's possible starts the journey. See, there's so much pragmatism in growth. You know, people talk a lot about the law of attraction, and yeah, I get it, right? It sets targets. But the picture of, let's say, a dream house on your wall is not why you'll eventually have the dream house. The picture of the dream house on the wall reminds you. It helps you believe that you're someone capable of someday acquiring.

that house, obtaining that type of success, which results in you, wait for it, doing things that help bring that to life. It is the doing, but that doing must be connected to believe. Mid-20s. I was unhappy, wanted more, but didn't really believe myself capable of obtaining more, right? That was the issue. Back to the old orange. expecting grapefruit juice. Can't get results in an area not conducive to their creation, right? It wasn't until I said, you know what, maybe, not definitely, but maybe it could happen. Maybe I can take control here.

The odds have to be greater than 0%, right? It's Jim Carrey and dumb and dumber, so you're saying there's a chance. Yeah, it's like starting out, that's all you need, a chance, the door cracked. In the beginning, I just needed to convince myself, something different was possible. The beginning of transformation and that internal change prompted how I interacted with the external world.

You do things differently when you believe differently. Or, if you want to phrase it another way, believing that you can bring something to life doesn't guarantee that you actually do. But believing you can't guarantees that you won't. And why not stack the odds in your favor? I often juggle back and forth

between the philosophical and the tangible or the tactical, right? Three ways to do X. Life hacked to change Y. Yeah, of course. Life does in so many ways come down to the tactics, to the how, to the steps.

But does that even matter if you don't believe in the pursuit? Does it matter what Google Maps says if you never step out your front door? You have to convince you. You have to create an environment in your world where change isn't crazy, more isn't absurd.

It might be challenging. But it's possible. And possible is enough. It is enough to begin. Enough to step out. Enough to see the trivialities as tools and the resistance as part of a beautiful game. Remember that the world is a mirror.

Reflecting back at us, our worldview. We find what we look for, so give yourself permission to look for things that make life beautiful. Give yourself the gift of believing change is possible. I'm going to be selfish. Because this message is exactly what I need right now. Exactly what I need to walk myself through. And so I'm going to dive into it fully with the hope that in some context,

in some capacity, you can pull this message or idea, inject it into your own life, whatever it is you're going through, whatever it is you're navigating. Long story short, it's the shiny objects again. It's forgetting what brought me here, what I love, what matters most. It's looking around, knowing the destination, but spending time doing me things that aren't bringing me there. So how does that happen? Misalignment tends to sneak up like a lion stalking its prey.

In fact, sometimes I imagine that the value of a giant misalignment. mosquito net that could be placed around the things that matter so that all that complexity can't make its way in. Let the externalities remain external, right? And I walk and I think and I wonder, why is simplicity so difficult to protect? Why is alignment always seeking to collapse in on itself? And personally, why is my inclination the second I stopped paying attention to wander off the tracks and navigate in circles. And well, that's the good news. It's like when you realize you've wandered off track or you're in aren't yours, you can

finally do something about it. In fact, that may be the most important part. Life is about casting and reeling in. Casting and reeling in. It's fire aim. Fire. Aim. Fire aim. Maybe wandering places we shouldn't be shines the greatest spotlight on where we should be.

It's the best way to wake up one's intuition. Because intuition tells you what you already know. But it's magic is that it tells you so loudly that it drowns out the minutia. The brain needs the heart. Otherwise, we become capable doers of meaningless things. I think life-changing things generally are not complex things. Let's do the exercise. The same exercise I've been doing for years,

the ultimate self-awareness assessment. A, where is your finish line? Close your eyes. Do you see it? Can you picture it? Okay, perfect. Now, B, how are you spending your time? And is how you're spending your time taking you to that finish line?

Is who you're spending your time with taking you to that finish line? Or maybe you need to shake the snow globe entirely. Maybe you need to define what your finish lines are, which may just be the spot I currently find myself. Micro example, the other day I was with my trainer, doing some barbell overhead shoulder. and was focusing on the top of the movement. And he says, look, for what we are trying to do here, sculpt and define your shoulders, you're paying attention to things that don't matter

that are not creating the greatest impact. The greatest impact's gonna be the lower third of the movement. So focus there. And it's a smaller example of a macro question. Are you focusing your time and energy on the things that are going to get you to where you need to be? J.R. Token wrote through his character, Gandalf,

all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. I love that quote. That quote is everything. The alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. We are what we do. What we focus on. And so when time passes, when we look around and see less and less correlation between how time is spent and where we want to be, the e-break needs to be pulled. Expecting something without committing to the required action to bring it to life, well, that's pretty close to delusion, if you ask me.

And I've danced around that flame of delusion many times before. Sometimes without thinking or ignorance, sometimes simply being wrong. But it's happened, right? Like, why am I not gaining muscle or improving my physique? I would ask myself, as I ran 10 miles a day, six days a week in South Florida. Obviously, there's a misalignment there. Seems obvious now. It's so obvious that it's almost laughable.

But that was just a misunderstanding, right? actions and expectations unlinked. And to those not familiar with this arena, this one may seem a bit out there, but I decided recently to stop calling myself an entrepreneur and instead start calling myself an artist or a creator. Why? You might even think, who cares what you call yourself?

Stop being so vain. But here's the reality. We follow through and what we believe ourselves to be. Sure, there are entrepreneurs. elements in brand building, content creation, the media business. But also, my circle consists primarily of entrepreneurs. My friends all have businesses, have exited businesses, or growing and scaling businesses. And so naturally, you know, without even thinking about it in a lot of ways, I start to look

at my work more and more procedurally, systems, workflows, scale, great, to an extent. But the magic is in the message. It's in the craft, it's in the creation. I've had to tell myself this 900 different times, 900 different ways. It's like that metaphor about the mosquito net I mentioned not too long ago. Why is everything else trying to collapse in on that truth,

on that simplicity? Because every time I deviate from me, I find myself wandering through a desert of discontent. I have to learn this same damn thing every six months. And, you know, part of my realization is that's okay. I think growth requires a rewiring and readjustment. Consistent acclamation. But you have to continuously pull back in what matters, right? It was not systems and workflows that got me here. It was telling stories and helping people

see the value that surrounds them. So it makes me happy. That's what I'm best at. I feel like a kid on Christmas every time I come back to that. You stretch a little too far. Learn. dial it in, find yourself stronger than you were. Stretch a little too far, learn, dial it back in, find yourself stronger than you were. It's like going to the gym, breaking the muscle down so that you can be built back up stronger. And so perhaps the value here is an opportunity for you to similarly think to yourself, what am I doing? And is it taking me where I most want to go?

and if not doesn't mean you've wasted time it's not an indictment on the steps you've taken or the paths you've walked it's a celebration of the awareness of the newness the novelty in the next chapter it's a celebration of the fact that you

just like me can go anywhere we want to go next. The wake of the boat does not drive the boat. This moment in and of itself is new. It's a rebirth, a creation. We go too far in order to regulate and find ourselves better than we were when that dust finally settles. But what's absolutely imperative is asking the questions. It's looking at your own life like an eagle flying overhead, seeing things holistically, big picture.

Emerson said famously hits your wagon to a star. So find the star that lights up your soul. And make sure each step guides you not away from, but towards that light. Those little blasts of intuition, they matter. They mean something. They are reminding the brain

that doing the wrong things will bring empty victories. Trust me, you can win a race you care nothing about, and a lot of people do. Define your terms and execute. Choose your mountaintop and ascend. We explore in order to refine. So let each step be a chiseling away of what no longer serves you

so that you can capture the pieces of life that light up your soul. You don't have to know everything. In fact, you don't even need to know most things. But you do have to know that progress often calls for us to move forward without knowing. It asks that we're willing to learn along the way to pick up the pieces as we walk by them. That's a vulnerability that is sometimes tough to face. Right? It's a nakedness that we never really shake.

The idea that in order to grow, we have to leave the now, ill-prepared for tomorrow, but knowing that we have everything we need to make the transition. The losses become lessons. The failures become data points. The mistakes become our clarity. And until we understand this, there really isn't an upward trajectory. We place too much value on the known, the things we understand, the cyclical nature of a day-to-day that is, as much as life can be, predictable and determined. Characteristics that are actually antithetical to growth.

In fact, one could make an argument that in this incredible day and age of information, Our need and ability to know often comes at the expense of true transformation. I studied podcasts for so long before I started one that I could have created and improved upon my own, I don't know, 400 times over. I had to find out who uses what, when to upload, how long the episode should be. And on and on. There are books and videos. There are classes and coaches. all of it wonderful, I'm sure, in its own way,

but nothing so powerful as that university of experience, of life, the idea of the thinker and the doer. The thinker that absorbs and contemplates weighs one option versus another and another, exhausting time sufficient for the doer to fall on our fore. face twice, pick up the pieces, make necessary changes, and be on her way. See, the information is out there. It exists and can be incredibly valuable, but simultaneously can contribute to us thinking our way into stagnation. A thing can only be what you make it. Things provide the value you decide to extract from them. I like using the example of water.

Because it's simple. Water is necessary to sustain life. Without it, one cannot go on. Too much of it, however, can sink a ship or flood a building. Too much is disastrous. And you can pretty much fill in the blank with anything else here to demonstrate that point. Life is a balance between not enough and too much. Scarcity and excess.

My opinion is that now, with regard to information and technology, we exist on the too much side of the spectrum. I mean, I can't even remember the last time I was having a conversation about something I wasn't sure about without interrupting it to pull out my phone and Google the answer. Again, this has its positives. Knowledge is power, but to what extent? And I'm talking big picture here. This is about so much more than that. and picking up a phone to Google information, this is about never feeling like we're equipped enough

to step into something new. Because we can always be obtaining more. And it's like, where do you draw that line? I now, because of the accessibility of information, find myself frequently staring like a deer in headlights because some minor detail hasn't been made clear to me. Because everything is not perfectly ironed out. My brain has become conditioned to know.

Because knowing is now incredibly easy. But life is about generating a meaningful existence. Meaning is carved from unknowns. It's not Googled or found on Wikipedia. A podcast or YouTube video can't give you meaning. It might help you prepare. or point you in the right direction, but meaning is about self-discovery. It's about, yeah, taking those things you learn, but giving them life.

You know, it's pulled out of the world around you like diamonds from the earth. Necessarily calling for going when you don't know exactly what the destination looks like, starting when you don't know what the end result will be. We are consuming at the expense of living, absorbing at the expense of living, absorbing at the expense of feeling, right? There's the idea that a business book is not the same thing as creating a business. Being on social media is not the same thing as being social. It's an aspect of those things served up without the risk or the upside. That is not real life. And one of my favorite movies, Goodwill Hunting, Robin Williams' character, a therapist, is talking to Matt Damon's character.

He plays this brilliant young man who has, you know, a photographic memory. He's read everybody, in the library, he's a genius. But even with all that, he doesn't quite have the courage to move out of his little world into something bigger into the opportunity that's available for him, if only he'd find the strength to seek it out. And here's a segment of Robin Williams trying to explain that to Matt Damon.

He says, so if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me this skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, whole works, right? But I bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling, seen that. If I asked you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus on your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times, but you can't tell me what it feels.

feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. I ask you about war and you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? Once into the breach, dear friends. But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I look at you.

I don't see an intelligent, confident man. and I see a cocky, scared kid. And the quote goes on, but the idea is a powerful one. And one of the reasons I've rewatched that scene over and over, it's not that he's trying to belittle the character. He's trying to help him explore the depths of his own personality, his needs and desires, trying to arm him with the understanding that he's strong enough

to move beyond the walls he's built around himself, that all that knowledge he's obtained and acquired is meaningless unless he gives it life. Knowing isn't enough. And I want to qualify this again because it's important you meet me where I am. I'm not making a case for ignorance or books, knowledge, understanding. That's critical, but it's the other piece that makes life worth living. You don't get the reward without the risk and the risk requires that one moves into the haze without clear understanding of an outcome.

It's moving into life without total certainty. And we are hardwired for that certainty. We're built to want to know. And now on top of that, we have the tools to take in infinite knowledge. I want this to be a reminder that we have to circumnavigate that idea to some extent. We have to trust ourselves to figure things out as we go. That waiting until we have everything figured out simply leaves the door crack for regret to sneak in and make itself comfortable.

There's an entire world out there waiting for you, not to have it all figured out, but to instead stumble upon the realization that you don't have to know. To move forward, you have to simply. trust. That's when the world will transform before your eyes.