Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - DON'T QUIT | Best Motivational Speeches Compilation

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." - Mark Twain

All you need in life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. That's a quote from Mark Twain talking about success and sort of the polarity of the process. And, you know, anyone who knows Mark Twain who's read his stuff, you know, he's a witty kind of sarcastic guy. So I'm sure he meant that with some humor. But there's a lot of truth to that quote. you know, I talk about a lot the truth so many times being in the middle, a combination of or a multitude of different ideas. And when we think of, you know, confidence and ignorance, they're very different, right? Why would we want to be ignorant at all?

Well, in a way, we need to be. And let me explain why, ignorant in the sense that we need to be willfully dismissive of the things that are not conducive to our success, to our growth. We need to build walls, mental walls that stand between what's good for us and what's not. You know, the odds, for example, don't do anything to help us get where we need to go. The negativity, the doubt from others don't push us forward at all. The self-talk reminding us that, hey, we've tried this. before and we failed before. Remember that one time you gave this a shot and it didn't work out? That's going to happen again. All that stuff, it needs to be drowned out. Again, a willful ignorance

of the odds coupled with confidence. Understanding that the road before us will be difficult, we won't understand it. We won't get it all. It will be far from perfect. But none of those things matter to someone who's willing to adapt along the way. It's like the ultimate Trump card. If the world's going to throw things at you, but you're willing to adapt and continue forward, then it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Because again, you don't need the straightest path. You don't need perfection. You need to believe and be confident in your ability to rearrange the pieces as they come. And that's why I love that quote. It is a a reminder. We need to be ignorant and confident. You can be too self-aware. You can be too overly

analytical. There is a middle ground there that I think is incredible. I got an email today that was kind of documenting in a few senses some recent success stories where people were completely oblivious, completely disregarded the negative feedback the world was giving them. Right? So, for example, Jack Canfield, his idea of 100 short motivational stories in one book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, was turned down by something like 130 publishers. There's a willful ignorance and certainly a confidence there. Howard Schultz, looking to start Starbucks. He tried to get a loan or secure a loan that he needed for the company. Like, over 200 times was turned down for this loan.

But kept looking, kept looking, kept looking. I think it was number 242. That said yes, that finally gave him the green light. Mentioned Walt Disney, who was fired for not being creative. Tries to make it in Hollywood. Has a rough start there. And you just can't help it think. Like, particularly with Walt Disney, right?

He's trying to sell an idea of a mouse that, that, moves and walks like a human being. That can get you a billion dollars or it can get you in an insane asylum, right? It's very hard to sell that. And all of these people continually moving through this adversity, what makes it real is in our world, you know, one rejection feels like our cage is rattled. It can be a big deal, right? if you're applying somewhere and you get told no,

or a person turns you down. You don't get accepted to something. You get denied somewhere. Like the first instinct is to look in the mirror and say, man, am I not good enough? Am I missing something here? And why these stories are so precious? Because when you put yourself in Howard Schultz's shoes

and the 120th bank tells you to go, you know, take a long walk off a short pier. How do you think he felt? Like, how did he internalize that? How did he pick himself up and go to Bank 121? Still have a hundred more to go until he got that, yes. I think it puts into perspective the world we live in

and the reality of getting things done. You know, we want things to be easier. And the idea in our head is that it is. It should be. But it never, never will be. It's Darren Hardy knocking on doors. Doesn't care about how many yeses he gets. He doesn't leave until he gets turned down by X number.

Why? Because in the rejection is what we need. If you're looking at doors, you know, the idea is not a world where every door opens for you. The ideal is knowing that life is about most doors being locked and having the courage and the conviction to continue forward until one opens up. You've turned that handle,

you walk through, and you enter a new chapter on your life, the next thing. That's very hard to comprehend. I've lived it. I've lived it as an entrepreneur. Can't do this for a decade without coming face to face with rejection repeatedly.

It's just something that you learn to live with and not personalize. It's not a referendum on me. It doesn't mean the other person or the organization, the company hates me or thinks less of me, sometimes it's not even worth a second thought. It's, okay, next door. If you can find a way to flip that perspective,

you don't need all yes is you need one. You need one person or entity or company, organization. You need one to work out and things change. Most people don't get there because most people, by bank 20, right, by publisher 20, they're saying, well, this is not for me. It's not true. We live in a world of rejection where the victories are sprinkled in. They're sparse. They're there for the people that can hang on long enough to get there. There's a quote attributed to Seneca that states, no man is much.

more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself. Meaning it's in pursuing the difficult thing that we obtain meaning. Recognition that we prove ourselves. But prove ourselves to whom? This is the same Seneca who famously stated that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. that he is most powerful who has power over himself.

And that's one of the beautiful things about stoicism. It makes us ask a very simple but often overlooked question, who's really the adversary here? Who's the opposition we're dealing with as we fight our battles? What is it that must be transformed? Is it the outside world? Or the way our eyes view the outside world? What's really holding us back?

The circumstances? Or our own personal thoughts about the circumstances? And I think this is where we misunderstand the challenges before us. I want to delve into this power of perspective to explain that we are the gatekeepers between ourselves and our ideal lives. And very often we do a good job. Very often we do a good job of ensuring that gate stays closed. We sabotage our own goals, our own dreams, our own happiness, while simultaneously pointing

the finger at a million externalities. See, when we look at the difficulties of life, and there's no doubt that life can be a very difficult thing, it's easy to look at the world as this binary playing field, me versus the world. And in fact, we often visualize the world as the enemy pushing back against us, as if its motives were counter to ours. So many of these narratives, these stories, they actually say nothing about the outside world. And when we look deeper, it becomes apparent that they actually say a whole lot more about us. It's the one viewing that gets to decipher what the circumstance means.

And so all narratives are reflections of the observers. Jim Rohn used to tell a story about two brothers who had an alcoholic father. He'd come home drunk, he'd abuse his sons. They had a terrible childhood. And as they each grew up and had families of their own, their paths. kind of diverged, right? One became abusive, and the other was kind and loving and caring. And when confronted, the now abusive brother stated, well, look, how can you blame me? Don't you see how I was raised? But the kind, loving and caring brother, stated, of course I'm like this.

I could never put my family through what I went through as a child. Same circumstances. Different lenses. interpretations, which means different real world result. And the idea here is to emphasize how one of the most important abilities a human being possesses is the ability to interpret the world around him. I think of us as subjects navigating a world of objects, as though the things around us don't have meaning until we place meaning upon them. That's what humans do. Create narratives out of objects.

And that often overlooked, seemingly insignificant ability, places a lot of power in our hands. Very rarely is it what we see, it's what we think and what we do about what we see. You ever hang out with people that just tend to be happy, upbeat, positive energy. I have a very good friend like that where his first inclination is always to find the positive. In moments where I've sort of trained myself to pause,

take a second, sift through the emotion, uncover the value in a tough situation, refocus, and take a strategic step forward, I look over at him and he's already arrived there. He's been there for three minutes, right? Eliminated the negative. It's his first instinct. He's the metaphorical kid hopping around in puddles, whistling at the top of his lungs,

while everyone else is hiding out from the rain, or at least trying to find the courage to run out onto the street with. Then there are people who seem to always find the negative. It doesn't really matter what this situation is. Happiness is fleeting, only to reveal the negativity that never seems to go away, right? The kind of person that if they won the lottery, their first thought, might be, oh no, but what if I lose it all? Both examples are people projecting themselves onto the world around them. The same way that smoke covers and consumes an entire room. It's not

the room that's the culprit. Here's another example from Jim Rohn, since we're on a Jim Rone kick. He's making a similar point, and this is all from a collection of speeches. He has on audible comparing humans to oranges, which is probably not a comparison you've made recently, but he said there's consistency to an orange and that it can be filled with one thing. When you squeeze an orange, orange juice is coming out, period. It will never be apple juice or grape food juice. It will only emit what it has inside, which is orange juice. And while here's the connection, when life pressures us, challenges us, or metaphorically squeezes us, we only emit the emotions that are contained and available, that are alive and well within us.

If there is no jealousy contained in our thinking, we're not going to project jealousy out into the world. If there is no hatred within us, we will not project hatred onto others. Why is that powerful? It's powerful. Because, again, it's one of the most important things you can do. Certainly one of the most important things I've learned to do is take that finger pointing blame at the outside world, slowly turn it around and point it back at myself.

And ask, what thoughts, what emotions, what ideas am I led? live inside my head that's altering the narrative, the story I'm telling about myself, and the world that I live in. And while one might think, well, that's uncomfortable, that's unfair, a little extreme, why should I point at myself? It's not my fault. I would challenge you, at least for the sake of the next few minutes, to see such a change as empowering, as your advantage, as the bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

See, if you always have feelings of, let's say, jealousy around a particular person, that feeling in your stomach like, oh, they have it all, they're ahead. They live how I want to live. They're this and that and I kind of hate them for it. You're naively giving the external world the power. You're saying I feel the way I do because of that out there. Some cosmic injustice, you are powerless. because you're neglecting your personal agency as a factor.

But when you turn that finger around and say, I only feel this way because I'm allowing myself to, then you can ask the question. So many never think to ask. Why? Why do I feel this way? Which lights a path to how can I fix it? See, the key to a better life is realizing You don't have to be in the passenger seat

pointing at and blaming the driver, complaining about the road being taken. No, you can get into the driver's seat. You can take the wheel. You can take control. Inherit responsibility. And there's more at stake. There's greater vulnerability.

But the upside is unfathomable. And I find myself thinking all the time, man, people are blaming the wrong thing. They're shifting blame to the wrong adversaries. The real villain here is not the driver or the road or the weather. The real villain is the voice in your head pleading with you not to take the wheel. Pleading with you to ride shotgun and complain as the world passes you by. And of course it makes sense to qualify that with the inevitability that there are some things placed

upon us that are just bigger than us that we can't control and you can make a list however long you want to natural disasters decisions and actions of others health problems we don't often get to choose the landscape so as the stoics would say understand that understand what you can't control and what you can because the beauty is that you can control how you navigate that landscape and that is power. That is what makes the difference. See the two brothers I mentioned a few moments earlier, same landscape. Different navigational tactics. Different view of what it all meant. One took the wheel and one did not. So that's Seneca quote. That states, no man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity, for he is not permitted to prove himself.

Well, it's perfectly clear, as far as I'm concerned, the question is not whether or not to face adversity. I think we all understand that. What I hope we take from today is a better understanding of what the true adversity is. A better understanding of the fact that in front of us there is always an answer, a key to every lock. Some people just don't think to look. They're so busy peering around every corner for external enemies and scapegoats that they don't give themselves permission to succeed. Maybe unfortunate, but it's true. You can hit the bulls, bull's eye over and over again. But if it's the wrong target, it won't do much for you.

You might as well have missed by 50 feet. And I think that is what we overlook. You can't always fix the outside world. You can't change the unchangeable, but you can always change yourself. You can always fix you. His Tolstoy said, everyone wants to change the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. You're capable of being both your great. adversary and ally so choose wisely because the world around you will do nothing

more than respond accordingly to your decision when the path is uncertain we seek out footprints from journeys that occurred long ago opinions from people who know no better than us we look for things that can't be given but must be made. I once heard Charlie Munger say that we are our own experiment. Life is the extraordinary, arranged in infinite pieces and placed inside a box, waiting for us to uncover and unfold parts that contain no meaning until we place meaning upon them.

And the danger of looking externally for answers is that no No one knows you better than you. Life is a playground, an experiment, a place to try new things, push, boundaries, build, fail, and ultimately build again. This is the process from which we see what we're made of. Who we really are, uncover what the best book, the most intelligent being on the planet can't give to you. where you learn that wandering is not the same as lost. See, we must retreat to the depths of vulnerability in order to come back stronger than we've ever been.

We must self-examine in order to find our wings. The Bill Gates of the world, the Picasso's of the world, they disappeared for 10 years until they came back equipped to transform everything around them to explore, or build, create themselves to acquire something that mere advice is incapable of providing. Don't deprive yourself of that because of the pressures right now.

See, when we realize that falling 10 times brings us contentment on the 11th, falling is nothing to be ashamed of. It's something to be sought out. By falling, I learn to succeed. By losing, I learn to win. By looking like the fool I learned to lead. By wandering off the paved road, I created the map from my soul to where I was meant to be.

Of all life's lessons, it's my relationship with what it means to suffer that's transformed my reality. Something that's learned, not unlike one's ability to read or write, an understanding that unlocks the door to fulfillment. Nietzsche says, to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. Dostoevsky says pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. Helen Keller says, although the world is full of suffering, it's also full of the overcoming of it. Our problem is not that we suffer.

Our problem is that we don't know how to perceive it when it inevitably arrives. We're taught that it's synonymous with a giant street sign saying wrong way. We're taught that the perfect life is free of its grasp. It's why when suffering does arrive, we're so inclined to run from it. I reference my experience as a D1 Rower often, not because I stood out or even really because of my love for the sport. I reference it because it is the point in my life when I learned to suffer, when I learned what I could put my body through, my mind through, and see that like all things, discomfort simply ends. And life is different on the other side. That's why I talk about waking up to go to the gym in the morning when it's still dark.

in the middle of winter, the practices that made me throw up, having three exams, two papers, but thinking about a 2K test. Because part of me couldn't believe I was doing it, because up until that point in my life, I would have simply said no. That's why I reference the three of us walk-ons that were their senior year out of this 60-plus that showed up freshman year. We built a relationship with suffering.

You understand what opens up to you when you agree to, for a moment in time, walk through those flames of hell. It's not a trick or a complex formula. It's just taking yourself to places most haven't learned to go. Not because they can't, but because they haven't learned.

When you know you can push yourself, far beyond what you thought possible. Not only survive, but come back renewed, re-energized, a different understanding of the world. It's hard to see anything is too much or outside the realm of possibility. In my personal life, I can make difficult decisions. In my professional life, I can sit down and write when I don't want to, and I feel like I can't. I can take on projects and scare me.

That take me so far outside my comfort zone, my ceilings have no choice but to become floors. You elevate yourself with ECHS. Gustav Lanzone says, There is no art without commitment and suffering. commitment and suffering. That is not a demon to be avoided. It's truly the beginning of everything. Jocko, he says, discipline equals freedom. Well, what is discipline? If not one's ability to accept and harness suffering, to teach yourself not to step back, but forward

into it, into the chaos, into the disarray? That's where our lives are assembled. It's where we are made. And so my message is where you would once say no, dare to say yes. Even if it's a footstep, a moment, one toe in the water, teach yourself that the very discomfort you've been running away from, that most run away from, will be the reason your life transforms. Change isn't a miracle. It's a decision. 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, 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 friends. 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 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 had the ability to bring their dreams 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 them, 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 Lillipads. 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. until 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 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.