Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - IF MEN WERE ANGELS | Powerful Motivational Speech

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" - Aristotle

There's an idea coined by Aristotle that suggests knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. I want to talk a little bit about why I believe that to be true. I went on a trip to the West Coast a few weeks ago, and obviously there's a time difference there. When I came back, it was a little jet lagged, threw me off my routine a little bit, and for the first few days back in Florida I slept in, which makes perfect sense, right? My body was still on West Coast time. But then three days went by and four and five and then a week. And I kept setting the alarm and I kept sleeping through it.

And this drove me crazy, right? I love my mornings. And, you know, I can go into that some other time. But the bottom line is I kept even knowing it's in my best interest to get up, I stayed in bed. Okay, so one week went by, going to bed, planning out my perfect day, setting the alarm only to sleep in. It had evolved from a reasonable transition to a clear display of personal weakness.

You know, mapping out what was best and then failing to do it because, you know, I was comfortable under those covers. Q. Einstein's famous definition of insanity, right, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. See, my perfect day on paper continued to be obliterate. by the very elementary and foundational challenges of reality. And if you think this is small, I just want to remind you that the little things ultimately become the big things, right? In other words, no one conducts themselves one way

for the small and seemingly trivial aspects of life and then, you know, suddenly levels up and becomes highly disciplined, you know, an organized force of nature when it really matters. No, you are who you are. We're defined by our habits, and it filters into all aspects of life. That's why Admiral McRaven talks about making your bed.

You don't do the small things right. You can't do the big things right. And to me, this was a red flag. I wanted to fix this. Perhaps needed to fix this. And I spent some time thinking about it. And as I was running, listening to an audio book, it hit me. I made what I think is one of the most important connections I've made in a long time.

And to explain this idea, I'm going to briefly kind of take us up a level and explore one of the greatest checks on human nature in the history of mankind, and then I'll bring us right back down to the practical, the alarm clocks, work out routines, and daily planners. Sometimes the philosophical opens a door for the practical day-to-day problems we have in life, which is why I love connecting those dots. It helped me see things with clarity. And so this began with a quote from James Madison and Federalist 51. He says if men were angels, there would be no need for government. And what he's doing there is he's making a case for a constitutional system or technology

that attempts to stop the greatest threat to government ever to exist, which is human nature. He's advocating for a framework that will save us from ourselves. See, it's not that human beings aren't capable of incredible things, beautiful things, magnificent things because they are. But it's because they are also prone to do terrible things. We're prone to act irrationally, to seek and hold on to power, or to break off into factions and groups.

And success of the whole over a long period of time requires more than anything else that we're able to, and this is the point, recognize and repress those inevitable negatives. It's not be delusional and aim for the perfection of men because humans aren't perfect. Humans will never be perfect. And so to wrap this metaphor up, that's why the U.S. governmental system today is modeled all over the world in places like Canada and India and Brazil. It's because it is brilliantly one of gridlock and conflicting interests. It's why the legislature's cut in two.

It's why there's three branches of government all checking each other, a system of federalism, all because of the nature of man. See, sometimes what you prevent is just as or more important than what you create. Again, perfect? No. But the expectation of perfection, it destroys more than it builds. This idea of utopia or the perfection of human beings doesn't have a great track record throughout history. It dismisses human nature.

So Eddie, what does this have to do with sleeping in in the morning? What does this have to do with making tomorrow's perfect plan before you go to bed every night? And then seeing it fall to pieces when the pillow feels, you know, amazing at 6 a.m. Well, I'm going to hijack Madison's idea here. It's similar in the sense that you haven't allowed the best of you to take hold and flourish because you haven't addressed the worst of you that keeps trying to make its way into the picture.

If you're aware enough to understand yourself and the things you do that get in the way of your happiness, you are on your way. because you stop trying to jam a square peg of perfection into the round hole of reality and you start operating practically looking to mitigate the things that you're doing that are constantly holding you down build checks and balances into your own life

I am no angel and neither are you so let's put ourselves in the best position we can to succeed and overcome the realities of life right I mean this very idea is why books like Atomical habits and the power of habit have sold millions of copies because they help us navigate around the mental traps constantly seeking to pull us into old routines. The best way to not eat junk food, according to Charles Duhigg, don't have any in your

cabinet. The best way to watch less TV, according to James Clear, hide the remote in a different room when you're working. Best way to stick to that workout routine, put your running shoes by the door, right? Make it easier on yourself to say yes to defeat the demons that hold us back. Again, if we were angels in our own lives, we'd see that remote, we'd smile, we'd ignore it. We'd look at the Instagram app and we'd say, nope, not now, Instagram, I have a business to build, but we are not. Angels.

And winning requires building systems into our own lives that allow us to win. So how did I defeat that monster that kept me in bed in the morning? by making it so hard to say no that it was comical. By checking my temptation so that failing was actually more difficult than succeeding. I made my bedroom immaculate, went to bed early, laid out my clothes, put my alarm clock on the other side of the room with a glass of water next to it, an old album I made in 2014 to remind me how far I've come and in the purpose of the journey I'm on. If I was going to fail the next day,

it would be because I said no over and over again to everything that's important to me. If I failed that morning, it would mean my priorities need adjusting, not my sleep schedule. And so the next day, I did get up. And as W. Clement Stone said, it was a little hinge that swung a big door. So I believe life is about momentum.

Feeling good about yourself, of giving yourself the best shot possible to evolve, to grow, to chase down the meaning in life. And absolutely, we want to be better. We want our eyes fixated on the stars and our compass pointing towards the horizon. But we have to first unshackle ourselves from the delusion that we play by a different set of rules

than the ones that govern the universe. Winning means understanding, yourself and life so that you can be someone who rigs the game in your favor. That's why I love Aristotle's quote. Understanding yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Until you've truly captured what you want and how you're preventing yourself from getting it, you simply can't operate at a high level. And so I'll end with the reiteration that you are no angel.

And no, you never will be perfect. But recognizing and forging your trail around that fact, positioning the best of you to outdual the worst of you, will take you a lot further than staying where you are and waiting for wings.