Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - "I AM What I CHOOSE To Become" - Powerful Motivational Speeches | Wake Up Positive

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become" - Carl Jung

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We are, in some ways, helpless to what occurs around us. There are things that are beyond our control. But the gift we possess, our power, if you will, is the ability to determine what we let in, how we internalize the externalities. We are responsible for being the gatekeepers of our minds, protectors of our worlds. There's a little saying that I aim to live by. It's incredibly simple. Basically, the idea is, if something is not a net positive on your life, start working to eliminate it.

If there's a person that is draining, creating more negative than positive, then they don't deserve to be in your world. Stop letting them in. If there's some place you're going that doesn't align with what you value, start working to eliminate that destination from your day to day. Stop letting it in. If you find yourself constantly thinking about worst-case scenarios, it's always, well, what if this goes wrong or that goes wrong? If you find yourself missing the opportunity and instead spotlighting the problem, start working to identify and isolate those thoughts so that they can be eliminated. Stop letting that stuff in. The great part about having so much control over our lives and our perspectives

is that we get to choose what gets our time and attention. The tough part, though, and it is tough, is that it means we also have to ask ourselves questions that perhaps we don't want to ask. We have to be honest with ourselves. Like truly honest, and the reality is sometimes it hurts to do that. to ask how am I contributing to this pain, this struggle? What am I letting in that needs to be kept outside the gate from now on?

And what we often find is that the answers are there. The opportunity is there, sometimes even in plain view. But our attention is often diverted from it and instead allocated to the things that don't even serve us or align with who we are. We've habitualized finding the problems and not the solutions. I can list examples of this over the course of my life all day, right? Epiphanies where I realized I needed to defend the thoughts that enter my mind

and better cultivate a world where I can succeed, where I can be happy. Money, for example, to switch from seeing it as a sense. scarce resource, something that everyone's fighting over, how to outmaneuver the guy to the right of me, how to get my hands on this elusive object. Nope, block that mentality at the gate and let in instead the idea that money is merely an exchange of value. How can I be more valuable to more people? Where value goes, wealth follows. Or as I've talked about before, the injuries I deal with so frequently, right? Keeping the poor me, or I can't deal with this, or whining, I'm willing to put in the work, why won't life let me succeed? Keep all that

outside the gate and let in, here's an opportunity to get better in other areas. I can't lift. Maybe I'll take a month or two to crush cardio, to eat better, to build mental acuity. Find a way. Or maybe it's that person who made their way into my life that over time became a negative that we've gotten to the point where our coexistence takes away more than it adds. They no longer belong inside the gate, in my world, right? Only let in people who do make your life better. And we have control over all of this. It's about accountability. It's about personally understanding the authority you have over what comes in and what stays out. Very few things in life are just because.

Things exist in our day-to-day because we have somewhere along the line allowed them to be there. So take some time to see yourself as the gatekeeper of your world. Audit what you're letting in and what you're keeping out. To do so will set you up for a life on your terms. A life that's not wasted. Or even merely endure. but one that's lived to the fullest. There are always barbarians at the gate.

And I mean this, in the sense that the second we give less than our best, the second we let up, it's not just that we allow the important things to fade, no, we let the outside world infiltrate our existence. In the history of civilizations by Will Durant, he said something that I found incredibly interesting. He's talking about the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and he says barbarism is always around civilization, omit it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms or mass migration or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle. It never admits its defeat. It waits patiently to recover the territory it has lost.

See, in those civilizations, Durant speaks of, they knew they were always living with a threat of an attack by outside forces that oppose it, knowing that calm and quiet wasn't the rule, but the exception to the rule. And in its weakest moments, it crumbles. In fact, Durant says societies are born stoic and they die a pecurian, right? created from discipline, but fall apart when people take what they have for granted, when pleasure and leisure become the standard. It's almost like society is a submarine keeping out the ocean of human nature, constantly

putting pressure on it, right? And why does this matter? Well, this is what's interesting. Compare it to this idea that I found in Jim Rohn's collection of lectures, where he's talking about life's concessions. He says even small compromises with regard to your goal matter. Giving in, even a little bit, can be dangerous. Saying, oh, it's just one time

is a wolf and sheep's clothing. Because it begins the process of the downfall. Plants a seed, it cracks the door for those barbarians waiting patiently outside the gate. The ones who no discipline is not guaranteed. Discipline is built, manufactured, it must be protected.

It is the exception to the rule, and they are chomping at the bit. Given the slightest opportunity, they will bring it to ashes. And this matters because it's up to you to protect that which is worth protecting. You ever have one of those days or weeks that are insanely productive or enjoyable, and you just think this is great, I need to do more of this, I need to sustain this. And then time goes by. The outside world sneaks in and the prospect of continuing that routine slips away.

Crashes. Because parameters were not created. Because you let it slip once. And once doesn't mean you'll pick up where you left off. No, once is whispering to your subconscious that it's okay to concede. It says, oh, it's all right. I'll stray from my path just for the important things.

I'll only crack the door for the barbarians when I need to. But now you're in an interesting situation. How do you measure when it's important enough to quit or stop or cheat? And trust me, I understand that life is complex. It's not black and white, but the areas we grow the most are the same areas where we leave no room for negotiation. X, Y, or Z is going to happen because it is who you are. In that door, it stays shut to the outside world,

the mediocrity telling you your plans don't matter to the barbarians outside looking for any excuse to infiltrate or destroy and see the point is not to avoid fun or leisure or the enjoyment of life no of course not what i'm advocating is that we highlight the aspects of life that are non-negotiable the things that mean a lot and are therefore subject to the ever-reaching arm of retreat you don't Have to do this the barbarians will tell you once isn't the end of the world, but what life shows us is that greatness isn't one crazy or monumental action. It's keeping the intruders out where they must be restrained, remaining diligent in one's pursuit towards something more. Yes, there are always enemies at the gate, but there is also within you the ability to keep them in check to taint. them to differentiate between your world and theirs and in your life your world your empire you are the gatekeeper normality is a paved road it's comfortable to walk but no flowers grow Vincent van go what is normality well according to the dictionary normal is the usual is the usual is the usual

average or typical state or condition. Common. Normal is also a decision. There's a quote by Robin Sharma, and I've looked to this for years. It states, if you want what the 5% have, you need to be willing to do what only the 5% are willing to do.

What they obtain is not definitionally speaking normal. It's uncommon. And what they do to arrive at that outcome is also uncommon. They play by a different set of rules, and in doing so end up with an entirely different outcome than most. To put it simply, we arrive at normal when our effort level is normal. You put in normal hours, or give average effort at work. Most likely your results, career progress, compensation will be normal. You pay moderate attention to your fitness, your fitness, your your health, well, your level of physical fitness will be normal.

You dedicate typical levels of effort to your relationships. Your relationships will be normal. Not terrible, but not remarkable. I'm sure you get the idea here, the pattern. Generally, over time, what we get starts to reflect what we gave. And here's where the self-assessment comes in, the awareness. You have to ask yourself in, pursuit of something greater, whether your actions are aligning with your goals and objectives.

There's nothing so futile is telling yourself you're going to achieve miraculous larger than life outcomes, and then putting in average typical normal effort. If normal goes in, normal comes out. And as I was thinking about this recently, you know, as it pertains to my life, I had a little epiphany, right? So fitness is a big area of focus for me. I run or do some type of strength training six days a week. As far as I can tell, that level of effort is beyond normal. I go above and beyond in that area of my life. But even though I'm aligned on my mission to be the 5% there, I realized there was a gap. I realized my diet was very normal, completely unextradinary. It's just easy to convince yourself to eat whatever you want after a really long

run, right? Why not pizza? After all, it's the normal thing to do. But I had to remind myself that what I wanted in that area of my life holistically is not normal. Therefore, the inputs cannot be normal. It was time to start standing up to those things that are very easy to say yes to, to rationalize. And that's the idea here. I pick my 5% categories where I truly want to excel and make sure

there's nothing normal about their development. You want top-tier results. You have to give top-tier effort. Make the sacrifices, map out the path. I've come to see this differently over the years. It's not an indictment against you

as a person for choosing normal, but know that it is indicative of a choice. And the output eventually comes to align with the input. All the actions or lack thereof stack up to resemble something. It's up to you to decide what that is. And so the next question, perhaps somewhat of an obvious one, is when it comes to the things that matter, matter most to you. Why stay confined to normal? It's the above and beyond. The peak experiences, the times we overcame, fought and won, took the risk and came out on top. That's when we are at our best. That's when we get the most from life. So is normal the end of the world? No. It's just that abnormal is the beginning of one.

There's a saying that in order to become something new, you have to leave something behind. You have to detach in some capacity, remove yourself from the physical realm, because the obstacles that we face are not physical. Ninety-nine percent of our problems are not physical. They're mental. And you know, as you sort of drive that metaphorical ship into the horizon, the biggest turn is never going to be the anchor or the headwind or the bowline. No, it's going to be the storyline. It's going to be the narrative of the person navigating that ship.

And it's interesting, because our first inclination when we feel stuck, it's always to point out, attribute our problems to the world in this predetermined position within it. Maybe that's the issue. We take our power. We put it into the universe, cross our fingers, and hope things work out. But that will always be a losing proposition. It will always come crumbling down. Because it's not the world that keeps you from showing up.

You're not physically incapable of taking that first step. or growing or evolving, developing, becoming something new, know that demon lives in your head. That's the mental Goliath we struggle with. Right? Because there's cognitive dissonance between who we know ourselves to be and who we want ourselves to be. That's the sea we have to cross, the terrain we have to navigate.

It's not the physicality of taking the steps. Anyone can do that. It's believing that you are worthy of the journey. And you have to ask yourself, is it that you can't become something new? Or is it that you can't, won't refuse to detach from who you used to be? You're still tucked away in that container, that box you've been building for years and years and years

that you've placed yourself in because I can promise you. One of the most liberating things to understand is yesterday is not a life sentence. Yesterday's not forever. Yesterday's not defining. It's simply a stepping stone. And every morning when you open your eyes, sun comes through the window, illuminates life around you. That's never your cue to put on a fake smile.

Play the same role you've been playing day after day after day. It's an invitation to do anything you want to do, to begin again, to start fresh. It's an opportunity to detach from that character, detach from the people and the things that don't push you towards what you want. Detached from the negative self-talk. And when all that's gone, everything is removed and it's only you and your self-belief, a will to move forward. I promise you that pendulum shift. Life becomes simple and how beautiful simplicity is. It's shining a spotlight on what matters.

It's clarity. It's taking control. It's picking up the clay and molding what you want to mold. It's opening the door and deciding to walk through. Everything else is variable. Everything else is noise. Everything else is detail and distraction. Because what you want, it's there.

And it's waiting for you to simply remove yourself from who you used to be. To step into right now and believe that you are worthy of everything else. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start. Dime Beauty, founded by a master aesthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin-conscious categories, skin care, beauty, body care, and fragrance, Dime offers simple, spa-worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch,

Dime makes it easy. The work system, our all-in-one best-selling routine, includes a cleanser of your choice, toner, serums, and moisturizers, taking the guesswork out of skin care for your healthiest, happiest skin yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five-star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeauty.com. That's dime beauty co.com. Your best skin awaits. Hey there, it's Ryan Sechrest for Safeway. Now through February 25th, stock up on your favorite self-care items and save up to $3.

Shop in store or online for items like old spice deodorant, always ultra-thin pads, Gillette fusion raisers, and refills. Old Spice, Total Body Spray, Tampax Pearl, and Gillette Mock3 Razors and Refills, and Save Up to $3. You won't want to miss out on these deals. Offer ends February 25th. Offers may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit Safeway.com for more detail. Hope. That bridge that connects the present to a more ideal world. The idea that no obstacle is too big to overcome, no situation too dire to emerge. victorious and that you are never confined to how things are. FDR has said we have always held to hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world beyond the horizon.

Why does this matter? Well, to put it simply, before one can leave this situation they are in, they have to believe there is another path worth taking. It's not always seeing but trusting. It's a tale of two components. One, the belief that something better is out there, and two, the belief that you are strong enough to bridge that gap to create that world. So let's start with number one. There was a study done by Kurt Richter in the 1950s, and he used rats. And it was kind of a gruesome experiment, but definitely worth talking about because The takeaway is incredible, right? And I kind of cherry-picked the relevant parts of the experiment.

Basically, he wanted to delve into the role that hope plays in our lives. And what he would do is he would drop rats into a jar of water and observe. See how long they would swim before they drown. And for the most part, these rats would swim for a minute or two and then ultimately give up. There was this innate feeling of hopelessness. But then he made a change. and when they were close to drowning, he'd reach in, he'd pick them up,

he'd hold them for a little while, and then he'd placed them back in the water, and the results between the two groups were night and day. The rats saw in the second group that it wasn't over. And when they were placed back in the water, they had a reason to continue swimming, and they did, some of them did for hours. The only difference being that they had hope,

they saw there was more. And I don't think that's too different from us. The situation may be different, but the rules generally apply, right? So much of conceding or giving up in life, accepting an existence that falls short of our ideals, is when we don't believe in something more. We stop swimming. You don't give ourselves a chance. Right?

So instead of creating bridges to walk on, we make walls that lock us in. hope is knowing all pain, all discomfort is temporary. And the second component is belief in yourself. Belief in yourself to traverse that space between current and the ideal. It's self-empowerment. You can be the difference maker in your life and others. And it's funny, the other day after reading about the Richter experiment, I was sitting at a friend's house with my laptop,

kind of trying to figure out what to make. of it, right, because the idea of hope I knew was powerful. And then I wanted to share that story. I wanted to write something that would highlight its value, but it seemed kind of unfinished. Or simply part of an explanation. I'm sitting there thinking about it. And I hear this loud bang over and over again. And I get up and I run to the back of the house, right, to make sure everything's fine,

see what's going on. And my friend's standing there with goggles on, this grin on his face and a sledgehammer. and a huge hole in the wall in front of him. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing? You just knocked your wall down. He goes, yeah, I wanted to make another closet. His family's growing. He needs more space.

And he just took it upon himself to make that happen. And I just looked at him and walked back out. Start walking in the living room. And it hit me. This is a component of hope. Seeing what's not there and doing something about it. If this swimming experiment is step one, this has to be step two in real time. Step one, believing seeing something more.

Step two, taking action to change it now, buying into the fact that you have the power to change your own world. And it's funny because any house or room I've ever lived in, my thoughts always, you know, you look around and this is it, right? This is the situation. This is what's being given to me. How do I make the most of it? How do I play within these parameters? not okay this is fine but it could be better you know by smashing down the wall in the back over there creating something new and you know obviously the message here isn't about home maintenance right

this is about taking a sledgehammer to the places in your life in which you are not content so that you can build in its place something that matters you look around to your left you're right and you're unhappy that's not the end of the story that's the beginning of the story. That's where the wheels hit the road. In other words, it's looking at life with the lens, with the freedom of knowing things don't have to be what they are. They don't have to stay the same until the universe changes them. No, they can be what you make. And what life teaches us again and again is that walls can be stepped over. Knows can become yeses, Impossibles can become commonplace.

But first, there must be hope. There must be an understanding that your world is a 10,000-foot view of all the little stories you tell yourself and the narratives you believe. See, every day when you wake up and take your first steps, breathe your first breaths, know that nothing simply is. No, it is. is simply chosen and can be re-made.

That's what makes life such a beautiful thing. It's flexibility. It's promised to provide what has been relentlessly sought out. So remember, it's when you can't find your answer. When the odds look grim, when the rest of the world tells you know that you most need hope. Hope, the power, the strength to look. within yourself and remember that one life can change and two you can change it.

Armed with this understanding, nothing is impossible. When others fail to see the answer, the light in themselves, in the situation, you become the reminder that light is internally manufactured. We aren't given answers so that we may believe them. We are given the opportunity to believe and thus we create. and thus we create that ending we hope to pursue. And without this, life is nothing more than a permanent status quo. It's holding our hands to the sky and receiving what life chooses to provide.

But that's not why you're here. It's not why you woke up today, not to accept, but to create. To find hope in the tragedy and the hardship and to find within yourself the strength to move forward with whatever you decide comes next. So much of life comes down to control. Understanding what we cannot control while simultaneously capitalizing and making the most of the things that we can.

A constant awareness that's critical to our evolution. Epicetus wrote, we must be at once cautious and courageous. Courageous in what does not depend upon choice and cautious in what does. And this idea has been shared many, many times in many ways over the centuries. Another of which a lot of folks have heard

is the serenity prayer, right? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference but regardless of how it's said and who it's said to the point is the same there are things we cannot control that we must find a way

to stop exerting ourselves stop exhausting our energy on they are as the saying goes what they are. These obstacles are immovable. And rather than continue to push and push and push with all our strength and energy, our time is best suited,

learning to effectively navigate them. And then there exists those things that are in our control. I believe it was the power of now by Eckartoula. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, if something cannot be changed, stop thinking about it, right? The future represents anxiety. It's worrying about things that haven't happened yet.

The past is essentially depression. It's worrying about things that already happened. We can't do anything about the past or the future. All we have is now. And if it can be changed, changed, then act now in bringing about a desired result. Take that first step. Create some semblance of momentum, no matter how small.

But to worry about what is behind you or in front of you is actually insanity. I remember loving the simplicity and pointedness of that message. Accept it, eliminate it, or adjust yourself to it. Sometimes it helps when I think about things in metaphors and I tend to do it often. This morning I was drinking coconut water, right? Of all things and I was thinking, man, it'd be nice. You know those little pieces of coconut that float around in there? It's like, it'd be great if they were not in there, right?

So I have this idea, just grab a strainer, pour it through the strainer into the glass. I'm leaning over the counter watching the pieces of coconut collect in the strainer, I'm just thinking, sort of zoning out. Like, imagine if those were my problems, just being separated out of my life just like that, how nice it would be, captured in a little net, and then, you know, discarded, thrown away. But, you know, it didn't take me long to realize a couple things.

One, such an idea would never happen. Life will always have some obstacle to place before us. That's what life does. After all, the word is predicated upon the avoidance of death. It's a struggle and a necessary one. Which leads me to the realization number two, we want hardship. You know, purpose and meaning. They're derived from our willingness to overcome adversity and transform because of it.

A life without struggle is a car without wheels. And sure, you might avoid the fender benders, but you're not leaving the grower. garage. So that's a thumbs down. So I thought, okay, well, what if I slightly adjust that thinking? What if it's a subset of problems that I can remove? That's when it kind of hit me, the opportunity at hand, right? Not the so-called problems, but my thoughts about them. There are the real difference maker here, the negative storytelling that can be removed, pushed through the again, not novel or groundbreaking. Like I said a few minutes ago, this idea has been around for thousands of years, but sometimes things land perfectly, right moment, right time. And I knew what I

needed to do was remove the worries and concerns pertaining to the events that I could not change. Yet I exhaust my energy dancing around and around with my thoughts about them. You cannot change the future. You can change right now, which ultimately becomes the future. And there's a difference. I had to, you know, pull that back in. See, I think most of our problems are derived from anger or emotional attachment to the immovable, the unchangeable. One of my favorite sayings is you can't change the direction of the wind, but you can always adjust your sails. And see, when you remove the self-tormenting you have going on about your past, things you wish you did or didn't do,

when you remove the concern that the future won't be exactly what you want it to be, which tends to be where I lean of the two, you're left with one thing. The present, right? Clarity. You have officially empowered yourself because the things you allocate your energy to

can be changed, can be made better, or adjusted. And that's really what it's all about. You can't change the fact that someone you loved or cared about let you down. But when you dwell on it, you're now giving up the present as well. You're preventing yourself from doing what is required of you now to make your life better. You can't control the fact that your company is reducing its size and your department is being eliminated. Can't control the fact that 8% get accepted to whatever you're applying to.

Can't control the fact that you will be criticized for doing the unpopular thing, the thing that you believe to be right. And I say these things, not to be a downer. I actually don't think there's anything sad about this to the contrary. Now that you've accepted these truths, accepted this as reality,

Now you can move toward what's best for you. No more dwelling on the unchangeable. No more fighting unwinnable wars. No, it's time to go put yourself in position to conquer whatever mountain is next. By straining out the things that cannot be changed, you are left only with what can. You can't change your company's personnel reduction, but you can find something else, something better out there, you can set the stage for a new journey. You can't increase the acceptance rate, but you can increase your value.

Go above and beyond. Put yourself in position to succeed. And if you don't, they're lost. Continue learning, continue growing, continue moving forward. You can't stop the world's criticism. But you can learn to toughen up emotionally, learn to trust your intuition and decision-making, surround yourself with people you trust who lift you up. See, when you stop wasting time and energy on the wrong things,

you get the right things. Like Greg McEwen says in essentialism, it's now but we can acquire. But often what we cut away, removing the things that weigh us down, that we're dragging along with us everywhere we go, they don't need to be there. I say to myself often that I have every,

everything I need. It's there. Some of it's materialized. Some of it exists as a seed that I need to identify and water and nurture, but it's all right here. Which means the problem will never be that I'm incapable. It will never be that I'm not good enough. No, when I'm in the wrong, it's because I've forgotten to see it. I've either become consumed with the wrong things or lost faith in myself to do the right things. And knowing this has been a gift. It's been tremendous. It's helped me even during the darkest moments

to reacquire what matters most. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes days, even weeks or longer, but I get there. Eventually, I arrive, and so can you. You have the ability to parse out why you feel the way you do, to categorize the thoughts in your head, Can I change it? No, okay, gone.

And with all that's left, begins the journey, the good stuff. The adversity and the problems that will make you who you are. And don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying it will be easy, but I'm saying it will be worth it. And that's critical to understand. Your world is there to maneuver and adjust to reshape. But its transformation depends on a laser-like focus on that which is,

malleable. That's saying, do what you can, where you are with what you have. It will lead you to exactly where you need to be. Even if you don't trust the road before you, trust yourself to walk down it. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start. Dime Beauty, founded by a master aesthetician, is more than just a skincare company with four skin-conscious categories, skin care, beauty, body care, and fragrance, Dime offers simple, spa-worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch, Dime makes it easy. The work system, our all-in-one best-selling routine, includes a

cleanser of your choice, toner, serums, and moisturizers, taking the guesswork out of skin care for your healthiest, happiest skin yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five-star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeautyco.com. That's dime beauty co.com.

Your best skin awaits. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. Now through February 25th, stock up on your favorite self-care items and save up to $3.00 shop in store or online for items like old spice deodorant. Always ultra-thin pads. Gillette Fusion Razors and Refills. Old Spice, Total Body Spray, Tampax Pearl, and Gillette Mach 3 Razors and Refills,

and save up to $3. You won't want to miss out on these deals. Offer ends February 25th. Offers may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit safeway.com for more detail. 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 her 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 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. They 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 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.

In 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 a photographic memory, he's read every book 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 this Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. You've seen that. If I asked you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus on your personal favorites. You may have even been late a few times. But you can't tell me what it 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 shit. 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. 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. What is failure?

Perhaps when the plan falls apart. Maybe when the project results are underwhelming. No, not quite. When your heart breaks, momentum stops, when your world is shaken at its foundation. No, to put it simply, failure is not going. Failure is the plan never falling apart because you were too scared to make one.

Failure is never being underwhelmed by the results of that project because you couldn't find the courage to start. Failure is no heartbreak, no setbacks, no challenge to your worldview because you stood still. I see life's disappointing occurrences. as a sort of transaction, some temporary discomfort, in exchange for the very wisdom you were looking for, placed in the palm of your hand. You endure the pain to get the answers. You accept chaos today in exchange for the map that enables you to navigate the terrain. How can something be a failure if it places you right where you need to be?

How can something be a failure if it brings you closer to the life you dream of? Maybe we don't look at life as failure versus success, but rather as being stagnant versus being in motion, immobile versus mobile. Maybe it's that simple. If you are moving, regardless of how fast, you're giving yourself a chance to overcome. To collect wisdom and pick up armor. You're giving yourself a chance to be more tomorrow than you are today. And that means we stop accepting the notion that we are standing still for our benefit.

Justifying that we're only stationary because we're waiting. for the right moment. We're here because we need this to be perfect. No, there are a million different ways to get what you want out of life, a million different paths to get you there. None of them require standing still. I already cringe at the amount of time I've wasted waiting for the right time. How I would sit on releasing this or starting that. Oh, it's because I'm a perfectionist. Only to learn that perfectionism is really just fear in disguise. You can sit there and wait and refine and refine and refine.

But I'll tell you what, the one who moves, who creates, shares, collects feedback, adjusts, and repeats, will have achieved that level of quote-unquote perfection before you feel prepared to acknowledge and share your proto-revees. It was simply by going that evolution took place. It took me a long time to grasp this, to understand it, and a part of me didn't want to believe it. As I found it inherently uncomfortable, but life rewards the bold. It always has and always will. Calling for a sort of calculated recklessness.

Great things are achieved by doers who can put their egos aside and let the world humble them on their way to the next attempt. In Ron Chernos' biography on Washington, one of the common themes which I believe made Washington one of the most influential people in the history of mankind was his ability to think, analyze, seek out of the most influential people. seek out the opinions of people around him, and then once decided that was that. He was all in, the rubber had met the road. This was now the way. And I find power in that. As overthinking is so often our undoing, right,

weighing out worst-case scenarios, contingency plans, this versus that. When progress requires that we should, Sure, spend a little bit of time deciding which general direction we go. But most importantly, that we start. And I think we've all been guilty of this. Over-analizing, over-planning. But just like a sailor can't predict the winds, we can't predict all life's variables.

Again, it's deciding on a general direction and then trusting ourselves to navigate life's obstacles as they arise. It's finding trends and patterns along the way and doing our best to utilize them as we move forward. There will be points where the road ahead seems overwhelming, the obstacles too abundant to make sense of, where the mind compels you to stay where you are and stare out in awe. It will suggest that what's fine,

Behind you is safer, that the worlds you know contains fewer monsters than the world you don't. It might even convince you that whatever ambitions you had weren't really that important, that you could easily live without them. And the longer you stand there, the longer you listen to that voice, the louder it gets. You dismiss it with every step forward. Your momentum is a dagger through the heart of any doubt that once tried to occupy the precious real estate behind your eyes. You don't have to outthink it, outsmart it, you just have to move forward. And what you find is that the mountains you once peered up at weren't all that they seen.

A culmination of little hills that can be climbed, manageable, that in actuality can be used to propel yourself up the mountainside. There was never a perfect path up. No magic transport to the summit. You might even think to yourself, what a shame that so many are still on the sidelines waiting to devise their perfect approach, making plans and drawing maps.

But that's not how any of this works. To win you go. When you go, to make progress, you move. Knowing full well that you'll find your dead ends, you'll spend time and exhaust energy, going down certain paths that don't ultimately lead you where you wanted to go. But what a gift the ability to reverse course

and take the right at the fork instead of the erroneous left you previously took. Your errors are not permanent. Your errors are correctable. Stagnation is what's permanent. Wishing is permanent. Someday is permanent. But right now, that's pure value.

So next time you find yourself looking out, as we all do, remind yourself that there are many ways to transform your reality for the better. Many paths to the mountaintop. But there is only one way to assure. you never get there and that is standing still. So trust yourself to figure life out as it comes. To take the pain and extract from it wisdom. To find the strength beyond the uncertainty, life is giving you everything that is required.

Not some things or a few things, everything. All it asks of you is that you dismantle the deletons the delusion of perfection and begin.