Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - FEAR IS AN INVITATION - Motivational Speech

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." — Joseph Campbell Monday Motivation Newsletter: https://www.eddiepinero.com/newsletter Free Ebook: www.eddiepinero.com/ebook  YouTube: www.eddiepinero.com/youtube  In this episode, Eddie Pinero delves into the transformative power of facing your fears. Learn why conquering fear, despite the pain, is essential for personal growth and necessary for the new you to rise. Eddie shares insights on how all the good in our lives stems from having the courage to let our old selves die. While we can't be certain where we'll end up, we can face challenges head-on and grow stronger through them. Discover how suffering, though inevitable, teaches us what we're capable of overcoming. Eddie emphasizes that everything in life comes with a price tag, and fear is the cost of admission to an incredible life. Join us and find out how to face your fears, grow stronger, and become your best self.

Find that spot where you're most scared to go and go there. And I promise you two things. One, that it will be painful, at least to some extent. And two, most importantly, it will be worth it. It will burn down the old you so that the new you can rise. And I'm speaking from nothing but experience. Every word derived from the delta between how I used to live and how I live now.

I'm referring to all the good that came from finding the courage to let my old self die, a recreation of sorts. And I'll tell you what happens. Your mind, your body, at least initially, start to panic. They say, wait, this is not you. You go back to how things were. You followed orders. You did what you were told.

You were linked to predictability. Remember how great that felt. Many of the people in your life, they won't like it either. For various reasons, perhaps it reminds them of their own limiting beliefs. Perhaps it shines a spotlight on the fact that most people in your life, yeah, they want you to do well, just not better than they're doing. And so you'll get resentment and gossip. a very obvious tension. But just like your mind and body seek to hold you to the status quo,

so does the world around you. What I'm asking you to do is to stretch beyond it. To reach for it anyway, to know, to see, to understand that there is chaos around you and embrace it. Enter into it, right? Because that is the second piece. the predictable, unavoidable friction that the unknown creates. We want to know.

We want predictability. We want safety. But the truth is, everything of value, everything meaningful in the world started with the process disconnected from a result. It's like, how can you be sure how things will end up? How can you be sure this will work out? How do you know for certain that the hero wins? You don't.

And that's naturally scary, disconcerting. But you have to be okay. Dancing to the music before it plays. You have to place enough trust in yourself to let the wheels hit the road. And you may be thinking, my God, that's a lot, man, that's heavy. Sleepless nights, the risk, the judgment. You want me to invite all that into my life? Just open the door and wave the chaos in?

Yes, because as hard as it might be, nothing is as beautiful or as meaningful as becoming an individual capable of slaying dragons. Suffering is inevitable. And look, you can even, either let the suffering come to you and hold you down, or you can go to it. Face it head on.

Be propelled by its turbulence. I was recently at a live podcast where a man named Akshay Nanavadi was being interviewed, and he's taking 400 pounds, and he's pulling it across Antarctica. Obviously, an insanely challenging feat. And someone asked me, about suffering. He says, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but I need suffering in my life because

it's what brings me closer to God. It's in those moments where we immerse ourselves into an unknown, something way bigger than us, way outside of our day-to-day lives, right? The normalcy of waking up and going through the motions. That's where we transcend who we were. That's where we get to find answers to questions we otherwise never would have asked. We learn about the world and ourselves and how capable we are, how much we can do. We get to touch the infinite. But the infinite does not come to us. We have to go to it.

See, most people, they accept what is. They look around and see not tools for building, but a reality. already constructed, a rulebook of sorts. But imagine with me the freedom in knowing that life, this little experiment we were just dropped into, has infinite potential, infinite space, infinite room for the assembly of dreams. There are infinite games to be played and paths to be walked, just because most people refuse to walk down them.

Just because most people only ever know a fraction of themselves, just because most people never embark upon the adventures hidden in plain view, doesn't mean you should do the same. Everything in life has a price tag attached to it. Everything. And I'm not here telling you what is or should be important in your life. You already know that. In your world, you're well aware.

I'm just here to remind you that when you close your eyes and dream, dream of a life lived on your terms. When you can see fragments of a world different than this one, and you're playing with the idea of reaching towards it, maybe even digging deep to find the courage, I want you to know that price tag, the one so expensive you're tempted to move on, to deem it too much, that it's not only worth it,

it's a bargain. That once you've fought through the change, move beyond the reliance on what your old friends and acquaintances think or thought. Once you've redefined the standards in your life, you will find a contentment otherwise unreachable. You'll have arrived at a state beautiful beyond comprehension. So if you're scared, good. Good.

Be scared. To let your old self die is a terrifying. proposition, right? After all, your old self is all you've ever known. But ask yourself this. Could it be that your old self fought and scrapped and fell and endured so that your new self could emerge? Is it time to climb the ladder? See that next level. Feel the sun on your skin, wind on your face, air in your lungs, from the perspective of someone who's not a cog in the wheel of life, but someone making the most of the masterpiece they are in.

Feel it, let it scare you. Own it. Fear is the cost of admission, right? And when you see how incredible the show truly is, you'll understand fear was not this stop sign. It was an invitation. Don't walk towards that which scares you run. It's not you against fear.

Fear is an ally. It's you against ticking clocks. You against the sands of time. So take fear by the hand. Not tomorrow or next week, but today. Now. I was in the car recently with my sister, Ali, her girlfriend Alex, and her girlfriend's dad, Jeremy. We were on our way to dinner in Naples, Florida, simultaneously driving and kind of looking. looking through different places to eat. And no one really knew the area well, right? So we get to the point where we're pretty sure we have a spot we want to go picked out when Alex suddenly looks up her phone and says to her dad, you know, looks like the place we're

going tonight is a little fancy. And so for context, right, they're both from London, their accents make this one million times better. And he hears her, he looks back over at her and says, well, we need to be. We deserve fancy, don't we, darling? And I'm like, oh my God, you guys are a real-life movie and don't even know it. I thought it was just such a beautiful thing. Moments like that are everything.

Reminders to immerse ourselves in the moment, in what matters with the people that matter. This, of course, wasn't about the restaurant, but how evident it was that he was grateful to be there. I remember seeing a quote that said, if you can't find joy in a cup of coffee, you certainly won't find it in a yacht. So how's that for perspective? You know, it's the little things that hold the value, the ones that become the big things.

And while our eyes are fixated on mountaintops, life is about the climb. Or as it's put in another anecdote, we live not for the destination, but for the journey. And see, this is a very timely topic for me. I woke up today, having hit the milestone, 500,000 subscribers on YouTube, which has honestly been a goal of mine

since I started doing this in 2014. I woke up so excited, so happy, so grateful for every single view, for every person that stumbled upon my message and saw somewhere in my journey a little piece of their own. But as today's gone on, it's been interesting. I found myself more and more unsure how I feel.

Because on one hand, it is representative of that exact thing. The journey, the ride. I feel like the luckiest human alive with friends and family that have truly carried me through the valleys of life. And if anything, milestones like these honor them and the light they bring to the world. But on the other hand, a part of me couldn't help thinking, oh, okay, I guess one million is next. And trust me, I wish that wasn't true, but it is. I remember reading in the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, a passage where he said, essentially

that the excitement of acquisition isn't in the thing we're acquiring, it's in the anticipation of it, the buildup. I believe you used the example of a Ferrari, implying that... Waiting for it was the fun. That's the rush. Getting it is just kind of, okay, now I have a Ferrari. And that's what makes these benchmarks we create so interesting. They're everything and nothing simultaneously.

Reminders that finish lines aren't of value for their own sake. They're valuable because they remind you of the race you ran, the highs you cherished, and the lows you fought through. Life ebbs and it flows, and I'm continuously fascinated by its duality, by the overlap we need to live in, how two things can be true at once and so often are. I can sit here today and tell you, I think in a lot of ways, societally we've gotten a little soft, too soft, that we often fail to understand that the road to what we want runs through the very landscape

that will push us to be more than we've ever been. That we have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Or that the beauty of being human is that we can make sacrifices now for that which we desire in the future. All this, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely unequivocally true. But there's also the existential question.

Yeah, but for what? If you're not living, cherishing the little things, finding the miraculous in something as small as a cup of coffee, then when, when, darling, will you let yourself deserve fancy? Now, I'm not going to claim I have all the answers. I do not. But if my time on this planet is a test case, well, here's what had shown me. When life is all about the destination, the 500K milestones, the money. the growth, the status, the world becomes hollow, and man does it hollow out fast?

Things mean less. And while sure, they're often a valuable direction to point the compass, they are not life. And on the contrary, when it's all play in no direction, all wandering and no learning, all chaos and no building, that subsequent meaninglessness emerges again. It's in balancing the do.

Life is incredible, but only to those who make a point to see it as so. And God is that easy not to do. It blows my mind how easy it is to miss the things that are most important. That's what this day has taught me. The finish lines and 500,000 milestones, though few and far between, are a celebration. But they do not point to themselves. They point to the little things. They point to the people.

They point to the times you were walking through hell and kept walking. They point to the sunrises, sunsets, and times you sat back and thought, wow, am I lucky? After all, there's a reason the view from the top points right back down to the world below. shines a spotlight on the very ascent you just endured, as of highlighting what really matters, what life is really about. And so today, by default, a new ship has left the port towards a new horizon. Compass aimed at, let's say, one million.

Why not? But it's essential to remember that that is the North Star that guides the journey It is not everything. I challenge you to point your compass accordingly to whatever it is in your world that matters, that excites you, that lifts you up. And when you arrive, let it be not the goal in and of itself, but a celebration of the joy.

The happiness contained along the way, the fact that you did look around and smile, did cherish those sunsets, sips of coffee, that you treated yourself to fancy, and that you paused every now and then to say to yourself, thank you.

Les Brown has said, you don't get what you want in life, you get who you are. If you put the man together, the world responds. You build yourself up, evolve. life around you will transform.

Someone once asked me on a podcast episode about imposter syndrome, why I think it's actually a very positive thing. My thinking is imposter syndrome is a sign that you're in an arena somewhat foreign to you. You're trying something new, playing the student. Anytime you do that, of course you're going to feel out of place. You have to. You don't grow without putting yourself in an environment in which growth is possible. We have to shake up the old in order to create the new, and it's that process, to Les Brown's point, that makes us who we are.

It creates our reality. Jim Rohn has said something similar in that it's not what we have, it's what we become. Having something is one thing, sure. but building yourself up to be someone who can repeatedly go out and get that thing over and over and over again well that's something different altogether are you willing to be that vulnerable

to start on the ground floor and work your way up because here's the deal there have been many times where I knew I had to be more than I've ever been in order to obtain something I've never had And if I aim to live life to the fullest, and I do, realizations like this will only continue. Everyone knows it's painful when there's a delta that exists between what you want

and what you're currently capable of having or acquiring. That's a tough realization. And what epiphanies like that tend to do is leave you with a few options, right? You can run away or get better. You can surrender and find something lesser or become worthy of that thing you want. Talk about a difficult conversation with yourself. Acknowledging that you're currently not where you need to be. The ego does not like that.

It's uncomfortable. It's why so many people raise the white flag and run. It can be much easier to shake your fist at the world around you than it is to delve into the one within you. Joseph Campbell has said the hero's journey is inside you. Throw off the veils and open the mystery of yourself. Close your eyes and imagine a world where you aren't scared to go after what you want. To grow along with your dreams, your goals, aspirations, where you walk directly into that space your curiosity is begging you to explore.

Where you condition yourself to depersonalize the criticism and failure, and instead focus on the becoming. That's not some crazy proposition. You're not being asked to go perform some miracle. It's simply about giving yourself permission to evolve into what you can become, allowing water to nourish the seed that is your soul. When you look around you and feel the very human thought that is, I wish something about this was different,

I challenge you to be courageous enough to point in and ask, how can I make it so? How can I level up and become the type of person that has X, that gives Y, that experiences Z? You are capable of filling that gap. Again, not a negotiation with the world, but an agreement with yourself. To accept more discomfort in your life in exchange for the upside. that comes with it. There's something to the saying,

don't wish it were different, wish you were better, because again, it places power and control in your hands to evolve and make it reality. It's crazy to me how easy it is, and because of that,

how many people complain about something their entire lives without owning the change, becoming the person who lives, differently, sees differently, feels differently, it's all there. You get in life who you are. And how incredible that who you are never ends, it's limitless. If you're willing to push,

to grow and change, it is your ticket to the ride of a lifetime. The ability to find calm amidst chaos is a superpower finding clarity and focus not when the environment is perfect not when the stars are aligned when your mind wants to wander and your emotions are high when the conditions are not perfect and your brain starts to rationalize maybe picking things back up some other time can you carve out serenity for yourself, just enough to do what needs to be done, because sometimes that is what makes all the difference. I remember way back now, 2017 getting out of a relationship, relocating, starting over in many ways, just kind of wrecked. And for a period, couldn't immerse myself in my work like I used to. The rest of life felt like it was on such shaky.

ground that it's like, you know, when everything's shaking, how do I find this stability to talk about it? To turn it all into something meaningful. It just felt impossible. But I was working through it, and one morning I was out on my patio listening to this meditation app. It was a guided meditation. And I'll never forget the voice saying, think of your thoughts as clouds floating overhead. You're sitting and looking up at them, just watching them. Just watching them. go by, which means a few things. One, it removes you from your thoughts. That shattering in your head is not you, and you can in fact step away from it and observe it. And two, it kind of diminishes the good thought versus bad thought label. They're all just thoughts. And they only mean something

if you take them on, if you choose to embody them. And now this alone is a practice or skill that people work on their whole lives, right? This concept is just the beginning, but I felt that in many ways it was a light bulb moment. It opened a door for me. There was a very practical usage here because the easy days are rarely a problem, right? But life is messy.

The easy days are great, but you can't rely on them, right? Life is ups and downs. It's the days that things are turbulent or the other corners of my life are present, issues, right? Whether it's people or health problems or frustration or angered something that's occurred, just human things. To be able to sit down, open my laptop, and envision it all as little clouds floating overhead is freeing. It's like disassociating yourself from the baggage. Yeah, you might be in a storm, but you're capable of creating an eye wall, manufacturing,

serenity for yourself. It's saying, no, the externalities do not get to dictate how, when, and where I allocate my attention. It's not about running or hiding. This is about understanding that life does not create perfect moments. The timing will never be just right. And therefore, we must manufacture our starting points. We must create the very arenas in which we will perform. And one of my favorite examples of this was an eye-opening experience for me being sick on the day I planned to run a half marathon,

been practicing, working out for months, right? Woke up with this scratchy throat and a cough, and everything sort of devolved into chaos. I spent the morning constantly reminding myself that I was operating on an empty tank, that I was going to be less than 100%. It wasn't until I was, I stopped talking to myself and just started running that I saw through the story I was telling.

I separated my reality from my thoughts and created a space I could thrive in. I remember about halfway through looking at my time and realizing, wow, like not only am I okay, this is great. I feel good. I'm going to make something incredible out of this. Conditions weren't ideal, but that's just a. It sometimes life asks us to make something of ourselves and the world around us with less than ideal circumstances. When things aren't perfect, can you separate your thoughts from the task at hand?

Can you find focus when you're surrounded by noise? Can you create clarity amidst the clutter? It's important to understand that life consists of highs and lows. That is the plane of reality we exist on And so the question becomes During the lows Can we carve out that environment to succeed When we want to stop

To turn back When we want to make excuses Can we separate the thoughts from what must be done The emotion from the action The ability to find calm amidst chaos Is a superpower hour. We just need to remember to look. We need to remember that the negative emotions, the ideas and the stories are not us. They are clouds floating overhead. Step back, observe them, let them

go by and understand that now it's time to do what needs to be done. Now it's time to tap into that potential and that strength that's always been there. It's always existed. It just needs permission, not from the external world, but from you. Now, you can become so fixated on winning or losing the game that you forget to ask yourself, am I playing the right one? Is this my game? Am I setting myself up to win in an arena of significance to me? Because look, there are infinite games out there. And sometimes we find ourselves caught up in a race. We have no business running. Meaning, it doesn't really do anything for us. It's not where we want to be or should be. There's a saying by someone in a few social media outlets actually restricted my post for suggesting

it was Einstein. So it might not be Mr. Einstein. But whoever said it, thank you, you're awesome. The saying goes, everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid. Now, there are a lot of us fish out there attempting to climb trees as we speak, wondering why we're not where we want to be. Perhaps seeing the results or lack thereof as an indication that we're insufficient, inadequate in some way. when, hey, that's not the case at all. It's that we haven't taken the time to identify our own personal intersection of what we love and what adds value to the world. We haven't manufactured those fireworks.

That's something that has to be explored, found. J.R.R. Tolkien, not all who wander are lost, right? And I think we innately fear this process of searching because it's unsettling to not know. how things are going to play out. Trust me, I've been there, right? It's taxing to not have your packaged little elevator speech and a five-year vision when it seems like the whole world does. But to deprive yourself of this exploration

is to potentially forfeit the very thing that you come to live for. Most of the time, purpose doesn't fall into one's lap. You have to have your eyes open. What's meaningful must be seen. sought out. Now, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here, because our world is not black and white, it sort of lives in this gray space, right? Can you win at someone else's game? Sure. There are a lot of people, quote unquote, succeeding in areas that are not ideal, that they don't love, that they're not their best in, but how is success being defined? I've talked extensively about my journey and all those

games I used to play, the targets I used to aim for. And I know a lot of people who've come to similar epiphanies. But when you don't realize, you can exit stage left and begin again, start something new, you simply continue this same song and dance. Right? It's not life that keeps us confined. It's ignorance that keeps us confined. We simply have to be taught that there's more.

And I understand to find an arena where you can thrive in a purely historical context is a luxury. You are programmed to survive. You're not programmed to build an art studio because it's your passion, right? But there lies the battle. We are at a place in time where we have collectively cultivated abundance. The phone you're using to consume this content, that little thing can, be a portal that transports your thoughts, your creation, your business to the masses. You have at your fingertips access to billions of people.

You have reach that humans only 30 years ago all the way back to the beginning of mankind could only dream of. The means are there. In so many ways, it's about freeing yourself to pursue the opportunity that exists all around you. We self-limit. Alan Watts asked the ever-important question, what would you do if money were no object?

Now, in a practical world, why ask such a question? Simple, because removing those monetary constraints as you contemplate your answer, allows you to truly analyze what endeavors are meaningful to you. When something is meaningful, you want to do it. When you want to do it, you immerse yourself in those little, intricacies in those details that the average person simply doesn't pay attention to. Making you so good at whatever that thing is that eventually, not only can you be the best at it,

but you can monetize it and probably at a very high rate. It's not money holding you back. It's not time holding you back. It's not the external world holding you back. it's what you have been conditioned to believe that's holding you back. You are a genius at something. You are king or queen of your empire, victor within your arena. But to realize these things, you have to, one, understand it's a possibility

and two, refuse to stay stagnant. We have to stop conceding so much while simultaneously accepting so little. Life will never provide what you do not ask for. So why? Why be scared to ask? Life won't tell you you're a fish climbing a tree. You must tell you that.

Life won't expand your horizons and adjust your trajectory. You must initiate that change. To find your genius, you must be willing to leave what's insufficient. To capture what's meaningful, you must be willing to leave what is meaningless. Let's agree to alter the question, do I have genius level talent?

Because you do. And you live in a society that also rewards those who realize it. The question we need to be to be willing to ask is are you willing to walk on shaky ground, to abandon, at least for a period of time, safety and the comfort of predictability in order to find that genius? Are you willing to nurture the greatness that already lives within you? Because it was never a matter of ability.

it's a matter of what you're willing to discover. So you've made a decision. Congrats, you're 3% done. Now I'm paraphrasing, but that's an idea from author and entrepreneur Lee Benson. Belief and execution. The duo that will change your life. First, believe. Why?

Because nothing happens without belief. Nothing begins without an understanding and a trust that the future contains something of value. That the seeds of discomfort being planted will bear fruit. We simply don't walk through doors if we don't believe something of value exists on the other side. And then there's execution, the doing. Congrats, you gave yourself permission to begin. That was a big step, right? But now you have to deal with life, and life, my friends, is no picnic.

It's in the doing that success is either obtained or not. That a new reality is birthed or not. In the book, Your Most Important Number, Lee Benson has said, So you've made a decision, congrats, your 3% done. Why? Because, well, now comes the implementation. the execution.

Now the feet are on the ground and the wheels, the road, and we must transform the thoughts into things. Thinking can be so much more convenient than doing. Execution is trying things. It's recognizing the attempts that didn't work. It's moving forward only to realize wrong path or wrong approach. Or maybe what's required of you is not yet something you're capable of producing, and so you must evolve. It's seeing setbacks as data point.

It's understanding that to not know is okay because we collect our answers as we go. It's seeing the journey is an experiment, one in which we seek to understand ourselves and the world. there is so much contained in that 97%. It's a write your own ending storybook. An infinite number of paths and outcomes, but ultimately only discoverable by you. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about life. And once you give yourself permission to walk a certain path,

once you believe in something greater than the world as it currently exists, you become an artist. painting something that was not there before. Using the highs as little benchmarks to remind you why you started to begin with when your landscape becomes gray. It's using the lows as fuel that turns the ordinary into extraordinary

that slingshots the old you to the new you, adding brightness and vibrance to the overall scene. You're encapsulating all of it as you move through that great unknown. As you push further and further into the abyss, you're playing the role of Maker. Not because you knew how it would all turn out, but because you didn't, and still you executed.

Recently in an interview, I heard Alex Hermosie and now accomplished entrepreneur in his own right, talking about some of his failings, consulting gyms in the fitness industry, the moment when things went south, and he lost it all. Now, for a moment, he thought he had. Money, assets, and perhaps even the pride, gone. But came to learn that money and those assets, they are lagging indicators.

They aren't the value that's obtained. The value is who you become. The value is learning how to be someone who can obtain those. things in the first place. It's emerging from the old restriction and limitation, the old narratives, because that cannot be taken away. When we execute, we're making ourselves something we otherwise could never have become. And so Alex learned that what he lost was insignificant compared to what he gained. And why is this such a common theme? With industry leaders, Folks speaking on their accomplishments, I think the answer is simple because you don't get there without the doing and the execution.

And if to execute means to step forward without having all the answers, after all, we are only human. Life will humble us. Excellence must be a game of trial and error. We can't escape those lost everything stories. Because choosing the right path every time, well, that only happens when you choose no path at all. We have to act and be okay understanding that action brings with it mistakes and lessons and setbacks. You know, all those little annoying things that become greatness. 97% is left because the path before you is unwalked.

But know that it contains everything. everything you need. So believe it. Decide because nothing starts without that initial 3%. But nothing changes without the subsequent 97.

That's where we are shaped. And when you come face to face with the inevitable adversity, know that life might take the material gains. It might demand a price you deem to be steep. It might collect as a toll assets you've been accumulating along the way, but it can't take what you know or who you've become.

And that is why you execute. To build the world around you, yes, but most importantly, to build yourself into someone who can thrive in such an environment. It's in doing that the man is built. And as was said in Gary Keller's book, the one thing, the man and the world falls into place.