Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - How To Work On Your Mind | Powerful Motivational Speeches for Success

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

"All problems are illusions of the mind" - Eckhart Tolle

I read something this morning that said at some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time and nobody knew it. It seems to me that many of life's last times elude us. We aren't aware of the pages turning or chapters ending. The phases of life essentially blend into each other, one fading into the next. In fact, we don't even realize the extent to which things have changed until we peer back over our shoulders.

See, life is happening to us now. While we plan, hope, and pray for better days, 99.99% of life consists of the time that exists between the so-called pivotal life events. The average, the ordinary, the things that we pay no mind to. So what's the relevance? Why does this matter? Well, because the sun coming up in the morning is life. Pouring your coffee is life.

Small talk with your loved ones is life. The art you're creating, music you're listening to, the workouts at the gym, they are life. And not in a so you better be grateful or else kind of way. But in a, if you don't understand this, contentment will be incredibly hard to capture kind of way. I have a lot of favorite quotes, but this one tops them all. Character Andy Bernard from the office, he says in an episode, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.

I can't get over how that statement proves itself to be true repeatedly. Over and over again, how it's not until we peer over our shoulders. that we realized how lucky we were, how much fun we had, how much the time meant. I recently went to a wedding for one of my best friends from childhood. And funny enough, we only lived in the same state for four years, from fourth grade to eighth grade, before I moved across the country to Massachusetts. And I thought, as I flew to the wedding, you know what, I should post a picture of us as kids together, you know, say congrats. And I quickly realized on the plane,

ride that I don't think we have any, right? It's essentially only memories. It's the stories that we still to this day laugh about, those events that shaped our childhoods, the things kids go through, that change the way we look at the world. And all that happens so fast. I think it remains so precious because we were so fully immersed in it. It was such a simple time, pivotal, and gone in a snap. I had no idea it would mean anything 20 years later, but that's life. It seems to go by in an instant. Which is why I think we need to find that sweet spot. Respect for the duality between sometimes sacrificing the present for a better future,

an ability that makes humans remarkable creatures. And also enjoying and realizing how precious the ride, how beautiful the now. Whether the current season is ideal, a struggle, or in between, to feel something at all in its own unique way is a miracle. And if we look, we'll find that there is good here. There's growth here. There are moments that you'll look back on and smile at knowing that they shaped you

and played a role in who you are becoming. So the point is, as we make our way through life, its highs and lows. Perhaps look around and make an effort to see the beauty in the journey. Understand that nothing is forever. The people you talk to, places you go, the things you do, they will all dissipate.

And while sure, the now may not be perfect, and in some cases even a stepping stone along the way to a better, wiser, stronger you, the idea shouldn't be too long for the enjoyable part, But to realize you are in it, to know that some of these things we take for granted will be missed when they're gone. Let's not fall into the trap of letting life go by while we waited for it to begin. Let's, as Andy Bernard stated, remember that the good old days are right now. And embrace today as the truly incredible gift.

opportunity and finite ride that it is. Looking back and understanding what you might have done differently is a source of strength. Awareness is a currency of sorts. But being sorry for yesterday, dwelling on the days gone by, that is a waste of time. See, those feelings of discontent, the emotions. that rise to the surface as our minds sort through that catalog of regret. You know, the emotions that try and pull you back down into the very moment in which they occurred. If you let them lead you by the hand back into a manufactured hell, they will.

And down you will go, reliving an expired pain that you can neither prevent nor do anything about. After all, it is the past. But alternatively, if we can do one of the hardest things for humans to do, which is depersonalize the occurrence, remove the emotion and find the value you stand face to face with an advantage in life that is exponential. Not only are you refusing to be defined or tortured by yesterday, but you're creating a framework by which you can actually use that pain to make a better right now. You're acknowledging that your mistakes are not indicative of a current reflection in the mirror.

They're not metal bars keeping you closed in. They're opportunities in disguise. A friend of mine once told me, from our pain comes our purpose. From our despair comes our hope. It's from the times we got it oh, so completely wrong, that we can now arm ourselves with the ability to get it right. To be better and faster and stronger and wiser. The reality, or life in the big city, as this saying goes,

is having to fall in order to rise again. Because if nothing falls, there are no ashes from which to rebuild. We change when we've lost. We evolve when we're cornered. We become more when life shakes our worldview. There's power in this suffering. That is, if you choose to find it. And that's always a decision that's ours to make.

Again, those same memories that can pull you down if you let them can also be used to elevate yourself. Higher than you've ever been. There's just saying that life is 10% what happened. to you and 90% what you do about it. And when you think about it, it's obvious. Because knowledge is only as powerful as our willingness to put that knowledge to work.

Yesterday's pain, its lessons, can be the very reason you transform, evolve to a higher version of yourself, but that's only if you stop using those lessons as an attack on your self-esteem and start seeing them as the gateway to tomorrow. Otherwise, they'll remain that ball and chain around your ankle. Is the mistake that cost you your business, maybe the inaction that fractured a relationship,

a swing and miss that hurt your pride somewhere along the way? Are they going to remain sources of pain in your mind, mental images or reflections of where you fell short? Are they going to fuel the comeback, the sequel? When we fall, we're given one of life's great. greatest gifts, a part two. Armed with the knowledge we otherwise would never have had, armed with an understanding that with the failures comes the strength.

As I've grown, I've placed more and more emphasis on thinking. How do I perceive myself? Because when that slips, life is never too far behind. But when you capture and maintain a healthy perspective, things seem to improve along with not because thinking makes it so, but because how we think prompts how we act and how we act changes our lives. It's that simple.

So the question, okay, that happened, now what does it mean to you will always be crucial? What are you going to do about it now? Will always be imperative. And if you look, you'll find that opportunity everywhere. I was thinking recently about all the books. I've read all the podcasts I consume, and there are a ton, right? But how valuable is that information if I don't act?

How much could any of it mean if it's consumed and then forgotten? A memory with an image and a title. I'd be better off reading one good book a year, listening to one podcast and injecting that wisdom into my life immediately. acting on it, using it to manufacture momentum. If the acting is more important than the knowing, why have I not placed greater emphasis on the action? Like 90% more emphasis.

And I think that's a question we should all be asking. And so let's move from the book example back to the thinking, reminiscing about our mistakes, the times we let ourselves down. What are our memories? If not just little novels, where we as the main characters embark upon the hero's journey. Warriors call to something greater, leaving a previous world, facing our demons, learning about ourselves along the way, perhaps cut short, left without a conclusion, only in need of an ending.

And these painful experiences are essentially us walking around with not only. unfinished in our heads. We've done the work. We've learned the lessons, endured the pain. And rather than continuing to revisit that discomfort of the moment, that stopping point, rather than dwelling on how we shut the book after the conflict occurred, let's open it back up and integrate that value, that lesson into the present. Let's grow from it. Let's evolve because of it. That's what's so beautiful, so exciting about the future. It hasn't happened yet. It's in your control. You're painting that picture now in real time, and so how convenient that you fell yesterday.

Now you have an opportunity to be stronger today. And how incredible that you learned what actions or inaction was not in line with the person you want to be. Now you have an opportunity to root all of your life. to root all that out. And how beautiful that you felt the pain of quitting, of stopping short, of throwing the towel. Now, as you push forward into that great unknown, you have a reminder, a benchmark to compare

with the difficulty of the present moment. You can silence the voice in your head begging you to slow down because you now know what the alternative looks like. To put it simply, you are not the same person you were yesterday. Specifically because of what you've been through, you have those mistakes to thank for the meaningful road you will travel. And let that be the expectation.

We don't get through life without mistakes. There is no perfect journey. and the ones who move courageously into the future know that more than anyone. Life pushes back. The world has a say, and sometimes that means we must be humbled along the way. It means we swing and miss. It means plans fall apart. But you will prevail, maybe not immediately, but eventually, because you perceive the adversity

as merely a cost of admission, specifically because you don't let it run loops in your mind. Rather, you extract the value and transform it into momentum. You are not your past. You are what you decide to make of your past. Just one more day. The power is in just one more. Don't need to have the whole book written. Stories told or city built. It's not about one universal

solution to all your problems. It's about continuing forward until the breakthrough. It's about knowing that when it feels most hopeless to go on, that's precisely when it's most important to do so. The world is not asking of you everything, just something. So give it something. Keep yourself in the game. Keep your head up and your eyes open. Keep your feet moving, even if you don't know where they may be leading you. You need not a billion answers. but one breakthrough one

breakthrough see we all fall we all lose our footing life can be tough and being that this is par for the course the contract we signed before we breathe our first breath of air it's a fool's errand to exhaust energy

on the occurrence to be angry at the situation to feel bad about yourself for wandering there. No, it's about recognizing where you are and then finding it within yourself to step away. One foot closer to the breakthrough to recapturing what matters. When things become too big, we simply shut down.

Complexities crippling. But truth be told, the path is not calm. Our manufactured interpretation is what's complex. So simplified. Step forward one more time, a little bit closer to the breakthrough, a little bit nearer to the light at the end of that tunnel. Remember, there is no all-encompassing formula. What there is is the strength that emerges from one's willingness two inch forward.

When all seems dark, when temporarily you've forgotten what that sense of excitement feels like. When the thrill of progress seems foreign, shut off the mind. This isn't the time to weigh pros versus cons or this versus that move into the haze trusting that what you need will reveal itself. Because as long as you don't stop, it most certainly will. You'll find yourself again, your path again, things will make sense again, but that right is earned now.

We're tired, worn in our solitude, beaten down, we might not be able to see it in the moment, but that's when the beautiful things are made. So trust that you are the designer you've been looking for all along. So imagine you're sitting down, having something to eat, thinking, relaxing, reading, whatever you're doing. Someone walks up to the table across from you, pulls out the chair, sits down, kind of lean, back, puts one leg over the other, casually tells you, you know, you probably don't have what it takes to do anything significant in your life. What would you say?

It would be outrageous, right? That's a ridiculous scenario. Well, let's say that the next day you get up and you go to walk, run, work out, and he shows up again. Starts running next to you, casually reminding you that the odds of you changing, doing anything for the better or slim to none, that this is kind of a waste of time for you. You brush it off, you go to work, and guess who? He passes by your desk, leaves a little note saying, you know, that your bosses, your higher

ups, they're cut from a different cloth. They just see things in a way you can't. You'd probably tell that person to take a long walk off a short pier, right? Or at the very least, you'd understand how absolutely insane the situation is. People can't just walk up and talk to you like that. But now imagine that same person is you, living rent-free in your head. And here's the catch. You invited him in.

You allowed the negativity and the doubt to live there. See, every time I think about that self-talk, I can't help but wonder in a world of obstacles to navigate and challenges to tackle, why is it acceptable for your biggest obstacle to be you? Why should you allow or be okay with that? And I'm not saying everything's perfect all the time. Every thought's pure bliss. But I am posing this question.

If you don't believe in yourself, how do you expect anyone else to? If you're not your biggest ally, if you don't respect the person staring back at you in the mirror, how do you expect the world to? Why is our inclination to tense up and refute the negativity from others? but sit back and accept the same nonsense in our own heads. If those words don't support what you're trying to build, I don't care who they're from, where they come from, why they're there, they don't deserve your time.

And it's a simple awareness that they are not truth, but merely your fears and your insecurities trying to stop you from becoming who you might be. My biggest leaps in life, they didn't come from physical milestones or bench, marks. They came from mental shifts, convincing myself, believing myself, trusting in myself. When the road is untravelled, when the story is untold, the positive and the negative are both make-believe. They are both fairy tales, their options, their theories, and guess what? You get to choose which option, which one will be yours.

My favorite quote is, you are always stronger than you think you are. Not so much because it reiterates how high the bar is, but because it reminds me how low we often set it for ourselves when we're not paying attention. How loud that negative voice can be. You know, when I was unemployed, I was writing, I was running out of money, my life changed because I stopped seeing myself as some lost, jobless mess. And I started seeing myself as one of the greats with a hell of a road to travel. See, people always follow through on who they believe themselves to be. I refuse to hear that you might fail and the not good enough and I buckled up for the road ahead.

And when you believe you can change and know that the road to your goals will be rocky, you will be uncomfortable, but worth it, you are taking that hostile voice and making him or her a spectator, not a decider of fate. And yeah, you will lose, you can't win all the time, and you will feel stuck, but life's not always smooth sailing,

and sure, you'll be mad at yourself, but not every decision is a home run. But these situations are the byproduct of a journey, and here is my point. Self-belief is being able to differentiate your situation and pointless, negative talk about the situation. It's about remembering that you are the gatekeeper of your own mind. When you believe in you,

It places your faith, your strength, and your determination in the driver's seat. It makes everything else trivial, meaningless. It makes it an option that you are simply not going to choose. There are a handful of recorded lectures online by Jim Rohn, who has definitely become one of my favorite thinkers over the years. And I found this little nugget the other day that I wanted to share. He says, there are four emotions that will change your life.

Disgust, decision, desire, and resolve. And I want to talk about the first one because I found the story to be incredibly powerful and also relatable, right, in various aspects of life over the years. So he frames it by talking about a Girl Scout walking up to his front door to try and sell him some Girl Scout cookies

when he's 25 years old. And he's broke, doesn't have any money at the time, and tells her what I assume to be a white lie as to why he can't buy the cookies at that particular time. Right, so he tells her that he can't, she walks away, he says after he closes the door and goes back inside, he felt something that completely changed his life. Disgust.

an overwhelming feeling that he simply didn't want to live like that anymore. He didn't want to lie. He didn't want to be broke. And I'm quoting him. He says, the day you can say I've had it may not be the day it ends, but the day it begins. And that feeling, which of course on the surface seems like a terrible thing, right? No one wants to feel disgust with their circumstance. But it's ultimately one of the most powerful indicators life can present to us.

There has always been, and I assume will continue to be, that point in many different facets of my life, where I say enough is enough. I just never thought to categorize it and label it like he did, but that's what it is. you know, getting to a point where you look around and realize you've conceded too much. You've strayed too far beyond what matters to you. You've left too much on the table. That feeling, again, well, uncomfortable, is often what becomes the first step towards that which is truly meaningful,

a better version of yourself. A realization, by the way, that's not some denunciable. of who you are, right? It's not saying, I'm not good enough or I'm inadequate. I would describe it as the exact opposite. It's thinking enough of yourself to acknowledge that you're better than this. It's saying, yeah, there's a reality where I stay the same, where I don't change, where I allow this to just be my life.

But that's not the reality I'm going to choose, because I respect myself to, too much to continue living with that dissonance between my actions and who I know I truly am. And I think at a deep level, we all understand this. So many times in life, funny enough, we don't change until we have to, until our backs are completely against the wall. It took me years in my previous professional life to say enough is enough. But ultimately got to that point. I've been there in relationships, been there with my creative work, been there with my finances.

And what's especially interesting is that as you grow, evolve, and your goals change, what you expect of yourself changes, grows along with you, you'll find yourself at that place again, and again, and again, and that's good. Listen to it. Right, that's your intuition telling you you're ready for more that something else awaits, that the status quo is no longer sufficient. And there lies the opportunity, to recognize and associate that feeling of disgust, as Rohn calls it,

with a need to change or an opportunity to change before things blow up or become more difficult than they need to be. Everything in your life has been allowed by you to some extent. You know, that's an important thing to understand. If there's someone in your life that's making it hell, you, to an extent, are responsible for that, right? No one gets your time without your permission.

If you're doing things that don't move, motivate, or inspire you, well, the reality is you're choosing those actions. Now, the circumstances may be specific to you. They may be difficult, and I understand that, but are you asking yourself how you can begin moving away from it? how you can put walls between yourself and the things that drag you down. Because the bottom line is it's very easy to become accustomed to things that are a drain on our lives. The old frog in the boiling water.

You throw a frog in a pot of hot water or jump right out. But you put it in a pot of cool water and you slowly but incrementally increase the temperature until it's boiling. The frog won't realize it's burning. alive. I think in the same way we learn to live with that situational disgust. The things we're unhappy with just become the baseline or normal. It becomes regular. And what I love about this Girl Scout cookie story is that light bulb moment where it's like, no, I don't have to accept this. I can take back control. I dictate how I'm going to live and I know this isn't it. Now you don't to have all the answers right away.

In fact, you most certainly won't have them. But every journey as the saying goes begins with the first step. That's precisely why the moment is so powerful. You don't start moving to that new place until you realize that you want to start moving away from where you are. Rohn talks about disgust being a powerful motivator. That's why.

It's the initial leverage you need to create that momentum, to see the gap between where you want to be and where you are. And this is ultimately a call to that realization. Do an audit on yourself and your contentment, the places you find lacking. They're calling for your attention. And it's normal. It's okay. It's part of life, but it's also your opportunity to begin making that change. I like very simple, very strong. straightforward notes to help me parse through this. Simple list, two columns. On the left, everything that brings me some level of anxiety or that is a drain on my piece. And on the column on the right, directly across from it, simply what I plan to do about each item.

Nothing major, but a tangible, manageable step. Because as Jim Rohn says, you begin to utilize that feeling of disgust or discontent to a major. act. You turn that message into something beautiful, an adventure, some variation of growth. That's where the good stuff is. By the way, it also changes our relationship with those emotions when they emerge. It's no longer, poor me, I'm stuck, my life is hard, and the list goes on and on. No, it's, oh, this doesn't feel good. How can I use it to connect me to something that does? Let's listen to that. I don't like the feeling of making excuses as to why I can't buy the cookies. I don't like the feeling of not having the financial resources.

Obviously, can't fix it overnight, but let's make a plan. Let's allow the wheels to hit the road, right? Which, hey, who knows? Might be more than I've ever done. This is the magic beginning, he alludes to. The confidence being earned, the purpose, the meaning, and ultimately being that we only get results. will replace our attention, the outcome we've been looking for.

So when you find yourself at that point, when you experience a repetition of disappointment or frustration with your circumstance, let that be the gift it's trying to be. Let it be the reason you will soon wake up a different person, moving towards that which aligns with who you are.