Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Ignite Your Potential with Eddie Pinero Morning Motivation

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." - Mark Twain Monday Motivation Newsletter: www.eddiepinero.com/newsletter  Free Ebook: www.eddiepinero.com/ebook  YouTube: www.YouTube.com/YourWorldWithin  Welcome to "Ignite Your Potential" with Eddie Pinero, where powerful speeches spark the flames of determination and motivation within you. In this episode, Eddie explores the essence of success, life's invaluable lessons, the significance of choices, and the pursuit of meaningful goals. Each word empowers you to seize control of your destiny, urging you to embrace determination and fuel your journey with unwavering motivation. Let Eddie's words be your guiding light, propelling you towards greatness and inspiring you to seize every opportunity. It's time to step into your power, rewrite your story, and embark on a transformative quest towards a life filled with purpose and fulfillment. Join us and let's unleash your full potential together!

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No problem. Now, get $80 off of your first month with promo code space 80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. So imagine years from now. Way down the road, you're older, sitting on your front porch, kind of fists propped up under your chin, you're staring out,

and thinking about your life. You're thinking about the decisions you made, the things you did and didn't do. What would you be thinking? What would you change? Would there be regrets? Now there's a lot of research around this topic and in one of the most important books written on it by Brani Ware talks about the regrets of the dying. And one of them is wishing I had the courage to live a life true to myself.

So you're sitting there, you're looking out and you're imagining what if you acted differently? What if you tried? What if you started? And you go back to that moment where you were looking fate in the eye, and you had to make that decision, right? That singular decision. It showed its face repeatedly, but the decision more or less remained the same. It was vulnerability or safety.

Choose one. Vulnerability or safety. Safety. That innate desire to not disrupt or challenge the way things are. Even when you know in your core, there's more out there. See, safety is the wolf in sheep's clothing. Watching life happen through a window is incredibly safe. But it means you're forfeiting the essence of life in exchange for a front row seat to watch others live it.

It means you don't capture that adrenaline that drives us. You don't take part in the emotion that excites us. It means you don't meet the people who would change your life and you don't see the places that would take what you know of reality and transform it. No, equating safety with contentment is the product of outdated thinking, an outdated operating system. It's indicative of a way of looking at the world that you

It used to be life or death, but now in 2020, in modern day society, it's regret. And the first step in changing something is to become aware of your current circumstance. It's to realize you're not wrong or guilty for thinking small or taking a back seat to fear. That's what humans do. our default setting, but it's your fault if you don't do anything to change it. It's your fault if once recognized you don't pick up the pieces and create a different narrative. You know, I always say the most important changes we can make. They're simple. They're not easy, but they are simple. And that road to something new always starts with seeing beyond the confines of the world

that you've accepted for yourself. Understanding the reality that dictates your reasoning, thought patterns, and decision making can change. Because my friends, if you can remember one thing and one thing only, it's this. Fear is not the enemy. It is the ally you need most. Inaction is the enemy.

Doubt is the enemy, not fear. Seneca says we see. suffer more often in imagination than reality. Mark Twain says do the thing you fear most and death of fear is certain. It's like jumping into a pool on a hot day. You get a second or two of discomfort before you can acclimate into something better. See people are stronger than they think they are. They are adaptable. They are resilient. But to see this, we must. We must move beyond the stories in our head. So back to that rocking chair, you're thinking back,

that fork in the road, and maybe you choose the challenging path, the one that scares you, and maybe you fall flat on your face. But you get up a little smarter, a little better equipped, and you keep going. And maybe you fall and you fail again and again, And then comes the criticism, but you see that maybe criticism doesn't kill you. In fact, it does nothing if you don't let it.

And again, you pick yourself up and you carry on. And you pick up some allies along the way. You expand your skill set. You drive towards mastery. And day in, day out, you continue to fall to trip. But eventually you look back and you see something you haven't seen before. distance and you realize you are not the same person you once were you realize what you have right now simply through a process of falling and rising again you have redefined

your existence you've redefined what's possible you've redefined the people the places the things that matter and it dawns on you that falling that fear that the unknown wasn't the problem that that's not It's just part of being better. It's the cost of greatness. You've been looking at things wrong. Hiding from exactly the thing you should have been running towards. Allowing into your life the very things that held you down.

Making you think comfort was the goal when it was shackling your feet to the ground and advising that spectating was a good thing. No, not you. And when you sit down on that rocking chair and you look out, thinking of the life you made, let it be one of adventure. The failures that made you stronger, the wandering, that unveiled life's beauty, and the ends that became beginnings. Because that is the essence of a life truly lift. acts are against the wall. We're forced to become more. When the clock is ticking, we are tasked with finding answers that hide among us.

It's in the darkness, we find light, and while lost, we find ourselves. The paradox of life is that from our pain comes our purpose, our evolution, and our greatness. I love thinking back to about 2014, making my way around Boston, having just quit my job, essentially purposeless, clinging to a YouTube channel and a podcast idea that I would name your world within. And why? Why do I think back? Why does this mean everything to me? Well, because at the time, I knew nothing. I understood nothing. nothing about speaking or media, audio, video, nothing about running a business. But more importantly, I knew very little about life

and what's truly required to progress in a world with infinite moving parts. I didn't know that my lack of understanding is what made everything feel overwhelming and complex and that it was up to me to simplify. I didn't know the extent to which I'd have to befriend failure. And that was the most eye-opening realization. Because when you gravitate towards a risk-free existence and you box yourself in as I had for so long, of course you don't get the upside,

but you also don't fail as dramatically either. Life was a simple game of cause and effect. Do work, get result, not much room for more than that. And so stepping outside that box in the way that I did, change some rules. I learned some things. First, you can spend time on something. You can exhaust energy on something and get nothing in the short term for your efforts. And I mean nothing, unless you count getting your pride stomped on.

Unless you count your friends disappearing when you need them most, unless you count self-doubt in a constant worry about not amounting to anything. I mean, these are very raw, very real human emotions. They tend to arise when we start something new, but in them is also the power. This is where the light bulb turns on and the path emerges. It's where I learn that we only get what we want when we endure or what we don't. And what a foreign concept when you think about it, right?

It's like, Eddie, take this mic. Go stand in front of this audience and pour your heart out. Your knees are shaking, chest is pounding, but dude, trust me, it'll be good for you. And funny enough, it was. It was because the fear in my stomach became the indicator that something new. Something exciting, something more was around the corner. Like Pavlov's dog hearing that bell. Any time the fear kicked in, I could feel myself getting closer to something meaningful,

to a higher version of myself. The pain is an invite. The sheer terror. And let's face it, that's what it feels like sometimes. It's an upgrade. disguised is the monster that you think you should be running from. When it is, as I recently mentioned, the adversary you should befriend. We have to change our relationship with discomfort

because our initial understanding, the one that comes stock in our minds, is never sufficient to build anything of significance. Its default setting is to preserve the now, not expanded. And so just like those stock speakers that came in my 1999, Ford F-150 when I was in my early 20s,

let's rip it out. Let's customize. Let's upgrade the quality of the sound we hear and the things we say to ourselves. What an advantage it is to know that the hard things are what make us level up. to find that awareness.

What a blessing that when life's difficulty startles and scatters the masses, you could be the one that remains. Standing tall, seeking out the advantage amidst the commotion, every little act of courage becomes more and more meaningful, powerful.

But we must lose ourselves to find our lives. We must embrace our fears if we are to become courageous. We must fail in order to succeed. And sure, sometimes the price seems steep. But I promise not going costs more. Wishing costs more. If only's cost more.

So maybe for you it isn't a YouTube channel or a speaking career. career, maybe it's something totally different. But it is something. And should you bring yourself to pursue that which your heart pulls you to pursue, you'll have those moments of defeat, where you're mad at yourself for leaving the comfort and safety of your previous world? You'll have times where you have no idea what to do, where you feel alone or stuck or unsure. The difference will be whether you see this as the invite you've been waiting for or the reason

to turn around and settle for less. That's the question. How do you internalize all that emotion that will feel like it is consuming you? I couldn't believe how strong that temptation was to go back, nagging at me every day. Just come off the edge. Just be comfortable again. But as my old coach would say in college, when we're doing wall sits or something physically taxing, 15 seconds. You can do anything for 15 seconds. And isn't life just a culmination of 15 second windows? It's compartmentalizing the process. It's turning the difficult into the advantageous.

You have the ability to not think like everyone else. You have it within you to rewire your previous conceptions of the world, to see darkness not as your reason to hide from conjured up monsters, but as your invitation to become the light. Remember that the best way to be more is to have the courage to put your back against the wall. And you won't want to in the moment. There will never be a perfect time, but committing to that vulnerability will release from within you the power, the strength, the greatness that has been for so long tucked away. By moving into the chaos, you are simultaneously creating the calm you always dreamed of.

You're realizing the possibility that just needed the door left ajar. to make its way into your world. Sometimes it's what we don't say that echoes the loudest. What we don't do that has the greatest consequences, where we don't go, that ultimately gets us lost. I remember as a teenager applying to college, I was working on the admissions essay.

I was brainstorming with my grandmother, talking over possible topics and approaches. And she read me this quote that's sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, but that's beside the point. The quote states, 20 years from now, you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines,

sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sales, explore, dream, discover. I thought this was the perfect bridge to the next chapter in my life. The latest horizon, the newest adventure. I thought it was incredible and it was. It was exactly what I needed and so on to that next adventure I went. But here's the thing.

As life unfolded this equation somehow transformed from exploration and dreaming and discovery into the question, well, what am I supposed to do? Somehow without my paying attention, life turned into a checklist. A question I couldn't get wrong. A test I needed to make sure I didn't fail. It's amazing how quickly we forget the infinite breadth of life because we're focusing on the dotted line before us. the one we're supposed to walk.

Sometimes we're so fixated on what the expectation is that we don't ask ourselves where these expectations are coming from. Who is so significant and wise that they know what's best for you to a greater extent than you do? See how that's an important question. And also, one you can lose in your periphery as you follow that dotted line before you.

When you have a destination in mind, hopes, dreams, ambitions, well, that's an adventure. When someone else has a destination in mind for you, whether this authority is imaginary or not, that's obedience. And sometimes the greatest disservice we can do to ourselves is to not stop and think, to not stop and ask ourselves where we're going and why. Do you remember when you were a child and you got into trouble, right? Sometimes you'd get sent to your room. And for me, this was agony. When it was punishment, I wanted to be anywhere but confined within those walls.

I hated being sent to my room. And then finally, the door would open. My parents would say, Eddie, you can come out now. I'd go outside, play basketball for a little bit. And then oftentimes I'd find myself right back in my room. happy, you know, playing with my toys, whatever I was doing, not a care in the world. And it's like, what changed? Nothing but the context.

Same me, same room, same toys, same whatever I was doing. It was, however, no longer a punishment. And I think this realization is worth exploring. We may not realize. We may not even be able to articulate it. But I think we long for conunders. control over our lives. We long to walk our own path. And in this situation, the path led me right back to where I was. Sometimes, though, the path leads us in the opposite direction, far away to distant worlds.

The end destination is not as important as the fact that we chose it. That we asked ourselves why, and that we believe in the answer and immerse ourselves in its execution. So when Mark Twain talks about the things that we don't do holding more weight in our hearts, it's because those things we tend to skip over are often the very things that breathe life into our souls. We'll go to school to get good grades, to get a 9 to 5, to get a promotion, to get a mortgage on a home. But the audacity to open that photography studio, the nerve to think you could rent a van, and travel the country. The delusion to think you could start that routine

that will get you in the physical shape you've always dreamed of. See, we're lucky and fortunate to have the things that we have. The quality of life we lead now far exceeds those that came before us. Life is convenient, incredibly convenient. But what is convenience if it comes at the expense of purpose, of meaning in life, because that's what steers? the ship. A crisis of meaning ultimately mitigates everything else. There is no exploration without

meaning. And without exploration, tomorrow becomes a repetition of today, not an evolution of today. And what's incredible, truly incredible, is that our purpose can be rediscovered, our paths redefined. How, by having a long conversation with You guessed it yourself. By putting the phone in another room, by disconnecting the Wi-Fi and spending time with you, something along the lines of dear self, what matters to me in this world?

Where am I going right now? Is where I'm going right now aligned with what matters to me in this world? And sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no great, but what we have now is a foundation to work off of. an awareness that should be celebrated, that you created. It's so easy to walk through life and never have that conversation. It's so easy to sleepwalk to the tune of someone else's song, the beat of other people's drums.

But when you open your eyes, you see the correlation between your thoughts and your actions, your actions and your reality. You realize that when you wake up, that tendency to ask yourself what you have to do today, to reflect on your problems, those questions you assumed were normal, that you never gave much thought to. Well, now you'll see you can dismantle that notion.

Now you'll see that if you can ask yourself what you have to do, you can just as easily ask yourself what you want to do, what you get to do, what life is inviting you to do. do. If you can reflect on your problems, you are just as capable of reflecting on the opportunity at your fingertips. If you can spend time dwelling on whether you're walking the obligatory dotted line that's been laid out in front of you, you're just as capable of redrawing that line and allowing it to pull you into a new dimension. Listen again, 20 years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sales, explore, dream, discover. Explore but for you. Wander down those paths that have for so long piqued your curiosity. Try things you once felt like other people were entitled to, but you'd never given yourself mission. Be that for yourself because no one will come up to you and randomly give you that green light. Dream because without building your castles in the air, as Thoreau calls them, you live your entire life on the ground. You'll never hit targets that you don't create. And sure, there'll be a

time that only you see the destination. Great, that's life. But with each step forward as it becomes more real for you, it will make sense to others as well. Trust each step like it is in and of itself a miracle. And you'll find in time that that's exactly what each step was. And lastly, discover. Discover who you are, what you're capable of becoming. As Emerson said, to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. To forge your own path, build your own life, stay true to your own heart is courage. So sail away because you have the ability, because you are strong enough, and because the story you're about to write doesn't continue on until you turn the page on today's chapter.

There has to come a time. when it's now or never. Well, you look at your reflection and realize that the cost of waiting is far more expensive than the cost of stepping out into the vast unknown. In every journey, that's when life effectively starts. But here's why this is so tricky. What's caught me off guard so many times in my life, It's the many shapes that wading takes.

See, waiting is not always sitting there and doing nothing, not at all. Sometimes, waiting is just the bare minimum. It's moving forward so slightly and so slowly that you can essentially trick yourself into thinking that you're progressing. Into thinking you're making it happen. When, if you really stopped and looked, If you were honest with yourself, if you really took a second to review, to analyze, you'd see that you're leaving almost everything on the table. You're not creating progress, you're dancing with the idea of progress.

Sometimes waiting can mean just going fast enough to not have to look at the fear you're hiding behind. It's reality. I think it's a very normal thing, but I also think life is too short for normalcy. I think we can do better than normal. And I believe with all my heart and soul that the world has for us the spectacular. Sitting there on the top shelf, waiting for those who can acquire the self-belief and the awareness to reach out and grab it. and how crazy a thought to realize that we could have been sitting next to the very thing we've needed for days, months, years, but never taught ourselves to extend our hands and reach. When I look back, the most important moments in my life were not tangible acquisition.

And see the flashy things that try and capture our attention, right, money, the condos, even social media growth, business growth, whatever it is you're working towards. Those things are wonderful. They are benchmarks that hopefully align with your North Star, but they are not the difference makers. Not at all, right? They were the byproduct of what really mattered. They weren't the moments that move the needle. My greatest moments were mental shifts, cognitive transformations. That's why I do this for. I see how much can change when we step back and look at life just a little differently. It was my realizing that I was demanding too little of myself.

That the world won't seek greatness in me until I see it in me. That shift that pushed me to demand more of myself. Seek bigger challenges. Value my work to a greater extent. Charge more for my services. And that mental shift is what made some of those externalities. possible. It's realizing that if you want it, more is on the table. That yesterday doesn't define you. That it's never too late to begin again. That everything you need you have, right? These are the

ideas that truly change lives. They make the difference. And if we don't become aware of these things, we leave them in the rear view. We walk right by them. In other words, we don't become aware of these things. words, the most important moments of my life were when someone or something shook me and effectively said, hey, look around you. If this is what you want, fine, enjoy. But for your information, there is more out there. And if you step up just a little, if you do just a little more, If you pivot and come at this thing a little bit differently, you will further that reach. You'll create another ripple effect that will transform your life. But we must stop and look around.

A good friend of mine, and this is just the other day, right? We're having lunch. We're talking about marketing, and we always joke that marketing is just a part of the business that I don't particularly enjoy, right? Necessary, but not my favorite. And we're going through kind of different strategies, ideas, and he presents one, and I say something like, eh, you know, I don't need to do that.

It seems a little over the top. And unfiltered, he goes, man, you're hurting your reach. Like, what good is that metaphorical restaurant that's not on anyone's radar? You're going to be the best pizza shop that no one knows about. And it just kind of hit, It's like, man, I needed to see that differently.

Maybe there's room to be a little more aggressive. Again, one example of many, and not every time is the idea or opportunity the right one or necessary one. Right? But at least you stopped. At least you thought about it. At least you contrasted where you are with the potential upside of doing something differently. That is where we leave opportunity on the table. You know, we most often, myself included, paint regret as this, the result of this blatant walking away from something.

A deliberate declaration, sort of a, oh, no, I'm not doing that, no way. And sure, sometimes that's the case. Sometimes we're cognizant of our fear and decline to move forward. But I wonder how often our neglect or refusal is softer, more subtle. I wonder how much of our regret comes from simply not stopping and looking around, not letting in alternative points of view that challenge us and forces to level up. How much of our regret comes from simply not understanding how short life is and how quickly time passes us by.

And if we don't create some abrupt change in our day to day, if we don't manufacture some momentum in our lives, even when it feels least ideal to do so, the ship we needed to be on will sail away without us. So think back to your hardest days. Even the ones that took you out, that brought you to your knees, and realized that you survived every single one of them. You have, four years, been acquiring the armor,

piece by piece to move into something bigger. You've been learning, you've been evolving, but today, what about sitting down with yourself and having the discussion you don't want to have but need to have? What about asking if it's time to leap where you once step? To run where you once walked? What about taking a good look around? and asking why you're living in ways that don't serve you,

why you're conceding so much of what matters. Again, the evolution you want and need is there. It's always there, and that's the key takeaway here. It will always exist. But the question is, will your commitment to stop, to think, and to reach for it be there? Years from now, Now, looking back, I think we'll find that our willingness to ask those questions mattered

more than we could have ever imagined. That silence often implies the lack of adversity needed to evolve. Because the reality you want, it doesn't come to you. You must go to it. And that means re-approaching today's normalcy and comfort, seeing those things for what they are, a continuation of the status quo. Nothing changes until you change. So take a look around, examine those pillars holding up your worldview.

Not once, but over and over again. And if one, many, or all of them must be knocked down, then so be it. The point here is that you can build. The point here is that life happens on your terms, whether you realize it or not, that doing nothing is accepting what things are. It's a head nod and a thumbs up to reality as is. So again, ask yourself what you want out of life. And if you are missing that mark, tear down what must be torn down.

It might be hard now. It might hurt now. It might be uncomfortable now. But when you're eventually standing upon an existence that aligns with who you are and what you want, you'll see how necessary it all was. How it was there the whole time. And thank God you found it within yourself to reach out and take it. Recently, I was thinking about something a friend of mine named Tom told me if you

years back. He owns a company in Oklahoma City and was telling me about how someone he'd hired essentially stole from him. And the first question that came to my mind as he was telling the story was, okay, what are you going to do about it? And I asked him the question and he was kind of quiet for a second and then asked in his southern accent, Eddie, if a snake bites you, are you going to chase it into the woods to get your revenge, or are you going to get the medical attention required to save yourself? Basically, you're going to focus on the past, or on what to do from here forward, right? Basically, he cut ties with the person but had moved on. It was already thinking about next steps that were best for him, his family, and his business, and I can tell you, since

hearing that. It's become an incredibly valuable idea in my life. Especially as you realize that there will never be a shortage of problems. You do what you can to avoid them. You try to steer clear when possible, but adversity will always be a factor. It's about knowing that and stepping into it regardless. It's just, it's something that's always intertwined in our development. And I find value in asking myself, is this action I'm about to take conducive to my growth and my happiness, or am I just chasing snakes? Does this just feel good in the short term because I'm angry or I've been wronged or something along those lines? Especially since most harm inflicted on others derived from incompetence, not malice, and I truly believe that. I think very, very, very,

frequently we attribute sinister motives to others when 99% of the time it's sheer stupidity. It's imperfect humans trying to navigate an often complex world. We make mistakes. Now, I'm not suggesting you don't stand up for yourself when you've been wronged or slighted. Of course you should. But the magic is in not personalizing the situation. possessing the emotional IQ to understand, hey look, it's not about me,

but whether I can salvage this situation from here. And that depends solely on how I choose to look at. Emerson wrote, People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. And what a powerful point. The flexibility and the leeway available to us

when it comes to making sense of the world speaks to not how the world is, but how the onlooker thinks and interprets. De-personalizing this situation is one of the greatest superpowers at our disposal. When you're angry and accusatory, you will, as Tom put it, end up chasing snakes. You'll end up breaking things that will need to be rebuilt and uttering words you'll wish you'd never spoken. But the five seconds required to pause, to collect yourself, and realize that you're in control is everything. The ability to see the person, the situation or the world, not as an adversary stacked against you, but as an inevitable challenge that must be managed. So how will you choose to manage it?

How will you choose to arrange the pieces? And by the way, I'm fully aware of the concept. constant theme for my speeches and podcasts and videos is the act of pointing not out at the world but in at ourselves. My responsibility, my fault, my problem to deal with. I understand just how heavy that is, how hard that can be. Especially when deflecting blame often feels like it would just be a tremendous weight off of our shoulders.

When revenge feels like the easy, intuitive move. But again, it's short-term relief to truly grow, to find the calm and happiness and meaning we long for. It's the internal relationship with ourselves that matters most. It's the ability to say, I may not have created this, or even, you know, I may have made the mistakes that brought this to life, but I can't fix it until I look at both the situation and my own reflection and proclaim it's mine now. Let the past be the past. Now it's me and the present.

And as far as I'm concerned, the present and opportunity, they are always one in the same, so long as we choose to see it that way. It's not what you look at, it's what you see over and over and over and over. again. Is it happening to you or for you? Is it a problem or an opportunity, a setback, or a chance to reset? I want to bring to light a story, one that I've told before, but it's so perfectly representative of the conversation.

You know, Jim Rohn talking about two brothers in an abusive household. Alcoholic father, terrible childhoods. You know, they grow up and both of the sons have families of their own. One is the exact same as his father. He's abusive and he's angry. And the other one is a great father. He's kind, he's loving, he's supportive. And when asked why, the abusive brother replies, look at my childhood, right?

How could you blame me for this? The other brother, when asked, responds, look at my childhood, right? How could I let myself treat my family the same way? And in a way, one spent his life chasing snakes, bitter, resentful. The other one asked, well, that was terrible, but what can I do to right the wrong? One personalized it. The other used it as a lever or stepping stone.

And this is of course a simplification, but I believe every struggle we face in our lives at its core contains some element of this choice. From the little things to the big things, where do I go from here? It's mine now and I can choose whether to make it better or worse. Chase the snake into the woods or march forward to find the value and write the ship. Remember that when it's hardest, when you least want to.

Remember that the present contains every single thing you need to begin a journey to recovery, to growth, to contentment and meaning. You, on your end, though, need to be willing to slow down the moment. Need to be willing to collect yourself and give yourself permission to take that necessary and appropriate step. Just go. Sure, things will feel strange at first. Abstract at first, wrong at first. It's incredibly difficult to separate from the past. It's hard to detach from the deeply rooted biological whispering of, hey, at least you knew what to expect back there. But that whispering has preservation in mind, not happiness. And at some point, we need to stop preserving that which is not ideal.

So go. The walls that once existed, they'll crumble. And this will be startling at first. Shocking at first, intimidating at first. It's incredibly difficult to watch foundational structures crumble around us, especially when you know you are the one that lit the fuse. It's hard to walk away from the faint murmur stating, hey, this was your home.

How dare you leave it? But those words, they have status quo in mind, not growth. And home is an idea you take with you. It's no set of parameters. Just go. The stories you told yourself, the narratives you thought were forever, will prove to be nothing more than the end of an underwhelming chapter. This will feel abrupt at first.

Unfair at first will leave you deeply unsatisfied at first. It's incredibly difficult to realize that happily ever-afters aren't linear, they're cyclical. It's hard to walk away from the voices pleading with you. not to turn the page, stating that because their realities will remain the same, so must yours. But those aren't the characters with whom you'll emerge victorious. Some movies must be recast, the setting, reimagined, the hero reinvented. And so it should be known that your greatest strength, is the little steps that you are capable of taking.

The little decisions you are capable of making. Remember, safety is not safe when it keeps you from what you need. And the wrong nows have a tendency to evolve into the wrong forever. The small concessions, well, they become the big mistakes. So if it's a sign you're hoping for, let this be it. If there's a time you're waiting for, let now be that time. If it's someday you are dependent upon, let today be that day, as doing nothing is in fact a decision, but only one of men.

One path laid out before you one single grain of sand Where the edge of today's world touches the shores of tomorrow's Sometimes it's about the ability to stand up face the horizon and just go Go because it's only upon going that you realize you're capable of the journey you've finally see in yourself the strength you've longed for. It's in going that you realize yesterday's situation wasn't even really the problem. It was your fear of the unknown, of leaving that situation. It was living with the devil you knew.

Instead of potentially having to face the devil you didn't. That's what happened to your ways. They just felt safer, tucking. away. But it's in going that we acquire perspective, the tragedies, the devastation, the things that kept us awake at night. They really weren't that bad, but how are we to know? When you build walls around yourself, what's within them becomes your entire world. It's ingoing that you create yourself. And while everything you need is already beating in your chest, The great unknown before you is the water to that seed, the key to that door.

What you fear is exactly what you need. And so the beautiful dance through life goes on. Not beautiful because of its elegance, it's rarely that. But beautiful because of its promise, its malleability. Beautiful because we get to move without answers. in order to find answers. Beautiful because what we become is directly proportional to what we're willing to endure.

And that means that the universe doesn't judge. It doesn't know us by our failures or our mistakes, but by our courage. Our courage to face all of these things and move forward anyway. To relentlessly explore the risk resilience of the human spirit, an infinite light in an otherwise finite world, a bridge that is built beneath our feet in real time. What a weight off of our shoulders to know this. We don't have to get it right. We just have to step out the door trusting that we will pick up enough pieces to put together something meaningful.

We just have to go. And then the world, it opens up. Just like that. Leave the old, embrace the new, simple, you think to yourself. Well, yeah, of course, the best things in life are always simple. Always have been, always will be. We just imagine them to be difficult. We have a knack for making simple decisions into complex matrices of cause and effect.

pros and cons, wins and losses, we learn to think for years, until we finally come to the brilliant realization that happiness, that meaning that a life well lived comes when we think less. Ready, fire, aim, there is no perfect path, just an adjusted course, an endless series of change, of learning that falling is just a road sign indicating where we need to go next. You can't plan for that. You can't chart a course that doesn't exist.

No, you leave who you were yesterday behind and you set sail. They'll ask you, where do you see yourself in five years and you'll think, who knows? But not here. It couldn't be here. be somewhere evolved, where pieces of the world shaped your outlook and became the armor that you now wear. New game, new rules, new expectations, new people, new places.

And what really changed? Well, how you view yourself. It's funny how it all works. How things come together when we look over our shoulders like it was meant to be. As if this had to be the way things are. No, you could very easily have stayed dreaming, looking out that window, wishing you could leave, hoping for answers that didn't exist. And so the complex now feels as simple as we meant it to. We move forward, not knowing, but trusting.

And we look back with the sense of understanding and a confidence that was built over time. In the game of life, there are people who go and people who stay. People who build and people who don't. And I'm not saying everything will be perfect or everything will immediately snap into place. How could I? But what I am sad is that in moving forward, we pull back the curtain on the opportunity that is available to us.

We move from the physical limitations of the bodies we walk around in and torporated walk around in and towards the infinite power of the mind, that powers them. We become who we were always meant to be. How do we know what that is? Well, not until we look over our shoulders, of course. So go. Go make your mistakes.

Go learn your lessons, feel your moments of pain, and your moments of bliss, your times of doubt and your times of certainty. Because in doing your moments of your moments of your Because in doing so, you will have done the very thing so few people get to do with their limited time on this planet. Truly live. So go. Just.