Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - IT'S NEVER TOO LATE | Best Motivational Speeches Compilation

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

"It's never too late to be what you might have been" - George Eliot

Human beings don't see we interpret. We don't take in what happens. We take in the implication of what happens. Everything in our world is story. It's similar to the idea of two ideologically different news organizations, right, reporting on the same event. Neither will be completely factual. They'll both uphold their individual narratives. They're not black and white.

They're interpreting gray space. And our individual lives are no different. We are our own broadcasting channels. Using data to support our individual narratives. See, we know what the story's going to say before the story occurs because we will make it so. We'll make life fit our beliefs. That's what it means to be human.

So here's where the value lives in the context of this, message when we find ourselves in a consistent state of despair or frustration or anxiety. It's a fool's errand to look for solutions in the external world. Because everything we find, everything we come across will support our current beliefs, our current story. That's what we'll keep playing in our heads. And it's why money can't bring fulfillment and another person can't take you from incomplete to content. It's why status will never equate to happiness.

Those acquisitions are like putting premium fuel in a car with a broken engine. It's just not the answer that we hoped it would be. To change your world, you must change your story. Whatever it is that needs to be changed. The location, the objective, the characters, maybe the journey altogether, but it's the neural network behind your eyes that must change, not the detail it takes in. And so if you feel stuck or feel like where you want to be seems unrealistic, you have to know right now that the very fact you think that way is the problem.

So ask yourself, not your girlfriend or your boss or your neighbor, but ask yourself what a turnaround looks like. Do you know? Or have you acclimated to being unhappy? Have you even asked yourself what happiness looks like? Or is your personal broadcasting channel so hell-bent on ensuring your life outlook stays the way it is that it's not even paying attention to the data it takes in? See, I believe wholeheartedly that the first step in any facet of transformation is remembering that you have control, that things in your life that bring you down or hold you back can be changed.

In fact, the very things working against you can work for you, but you have to be aware. You have to think about it. Now, I'm not a believer in magic, right? I don't think you sit back, say, I don't want to be unhappy ever again, snap your fingers, and smile until the end of eternity. But I do believe that once we're aware of our manufactured shackles and our self-imposed limitation we can start chipping away doing the one two or three small things every day tiny swings at the tree until it falls right if it's i'm not happy with my work life well what does a

better situation look like what bridges that gap i'll wake up 20 minutes earlier on weekdays and master Microsoft Excel i'll send one message on LinkedIn asking an expert about the field i want to move into i'll read 20 pages a day in a book related to business you think those things are small, see what they look like compounded in a year. Not only that, this is the most important part. You are taking the power back. You're taking control. And that's what feels good. That's where we get our identity. You get a little disappointed at how you've let your physique slip when you look in the mirror. Don't be sad about it every day. Again, ask yourself what the inverse looks like and start doing small things. Subtract one sports drink and add one green smoothie.

Double your water intake. Do a 10-minute daily workout on YouTube. The pieces are out there. And to find yourself again is to realize that they're out there. Realize that you're playing a movie on loop in your head that isn't right. It's just not you. And well, what movie do you want? to be playing in an ideal world scroll through the library find it click play and start doing the small things that make it real there's so much power in progress I've seen this unfold in different areas of my life but particularly as a writer as a speaker it's like you identify who you want to be you start making tiny steps and after a while you're surrounded by the change that you've created.

How can you not believe something that you're starting to live? It has to become your identity because it is you. It's around you. You breathe it. So look around and realize the malleability of your situation.

And if what you find is not you, good. Here is your opportunity to tear down the old and construct the new. You can do that because you have control. Because it's within your grasp. So start the new movie, the new story, make yourself the hero, and set out to find yourself again.

You weren't put here to live in the shadows of life. exist beyond the sun's grasp to stay on the outside looking in. No, you weren't put here to live in the shadows of life. It's important to remember the difference between now and forever, the distinction between today and tomorrow, because from time to time they look deceptively similar, especially when we inevitably find ourselves in the darkest of time. times when despite our best efforts, our world is reduced to shadows, void of hope.

When tomorrow and today have merged into one endless entity, it always seems to be in these times that we forget that right now is just a moment, not an assigned permanent, but a bridge to something great. As Victor Frankel says, if there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. We all suffer, we all hurt, we all go through periods of time where we can't see or hear or feel anything beyond the darkness we find ourselves in, but it's there. Darkness cannot be defined without light.

It's in the definition. Darkness is a partial or total absence of light. They need each other darkness and light. The one thing that can bring darkness to its knees is out there, everywhere, all around it. And if there was ever a reason to be hopeful, enthusiastic, if there's ever a reason to believe, it's that a new life is always a light switch away. It's that darkness is as temporary as the day. And the antidote requires only that you believe it to be true.

Only that you find the resolve to reach one foot out, to remind yourself of the sun's warmth and the infinite beauty of a world beyond this temporary darkness. Because you weren't put here to live in the shadows of life, but to reemerge like a rocket through the Earth's stratosphere to swing from star to star like life is a playground. and you make the rules. And I think when we look back, we'll be nothing but grateful for those times of darkness. They, in a sense, prepared us for the road ahead by giving us what we need most.

Perspective. Life lessons, a roadmap to follow because you don't appreciate the light, the sun, the clearer blue skies, the wind on your face, the sound of the waves that chirping, of the birds. No, you don't see the beauty in any of that until even if for a moment it is taken away. You don't learn about life's abundance until you come face to face with scarcity. You don't learn to give until you've had your world taken away. You don't learn to love until

you've experienced heartbreak. You don't learn courage until you've been overcome by fear, You don't learn to grow until you've been truly stuck. You don't learn to believe until you've looked in the mirror and doubt peers back. You don't know who you are until you learn what you're not. See, everyone finds themselves having wandered into the dark, sometimes of their own volition, sometimes of fate. But like leaves changing color in the fall, the earth on its journey around the sun, a wave emerging and falling back into that which it came. It is not an end, but a beginning.

Life's way of preparing us for what's to come, introducing us to the infinite possibility of tomorrow because you weren't put here. To live in the shadows of life, but to emerge from them. To light up the world. No, you weren't put here. to live in the shadows of life.

When it comes to the almost 8 billion people on planet Earth, there's undoubtedly a variance in the resources at our disposal, the influence we have. What we all share is the ability to rule over our own lives, our own thoughts. As Thoreau said, think for yourself, or others will think of yourself. for you without thinking of you.

See, life moves quickly. And if one is unable to slow it down to examine the world around them, well, they'll find themselves a cog in the wheel of their own existence, a pawn on the chessboard of life. Because reality is a battle. A battle of self-interest that requires that we build walls around that which is precious, that we protected it all costs.

Your worldview is the foundation for everything of value in your life, yet it's constantly under attack. Attack from the negativity at the gate. The suffering attempting to breach the walls, the outside influences, praying that you'll outsource your thinking, that you'll let them rule from afar. To maintain control over your own outlook, it's no small feat. It's perhaps the most important battle of your life. It's the difference between intentionality and chance. The role of the ruler or the ruled.

As the saying goes, if you don't build your dream, you will spend your days building someone else's. If you don't ask yourself what you want in life, those needs will ultimately be buried under nonsensical obligation that takes their place, where there are vacuums in awareness that you will be filled, usually not by actors with the same interests as you. See, mistakes are not the problem. No mistakes mean you're present, driving towards something, collecting data for this experiment

that is life. It's autopilot that destroys. Like that frog put in a pot heating up so slowly it never knows to jump out. the external world becomes its demise. And this message isn't to instill fear or intimidate. It's to remind you to ask the question that so few ask. How is my life best lived? And what can I do to bring that to reality?

If you can think for yourself, you're never out of the fight. If you can think for yourself, you're always a decision away from advancement in the direction of that which matters most. So trust you to do what's right for you. In a world where no one knows what they're doing, I can assure you you don't need external endorsements or stamps of approval. Take Robert Frost, road less traveled by and don't look back. Don't feel remorse. That's where you're forced to find yourself,

to ask the tough questions to embrace who you are. Because the crowd is antithetical. to rationality. Not just because responsibility dissipates. Not just because human beings become essentially well-dressed chimpanzees, but because rarely on the micro level is the collective goal, your goal. Have the courage to see that. Have the courage to understand that life is not an instruction manual. Everything around you, you have in one way or another accepted. And in accepting it, you have chosen it. By not saying no, you have in fact said yes. So realize that the world around you doesn't change until your thoughts become the bridge that connects current to future,

today to tomorrow. Until you realize life can't make you a victim or a pawn on its chessboard without your permission, whether implicitly or explicitly. No, you have the ability to think, control, orchestrate something great. greater than what's in front of you. Let today be your next courageous step in the direction of that reality. Life is delicate, defined as easily broken or damaged, fragile. There's nothing around you that's forever. There's no permanence in our world, and sometimes this is a difficult thing to grasp.

Certainly, it's why we long for patterns of consistency where we can find them. We do everything we can to manufacture some semblance of predictability for as long as we can. Doing our best to repress the idea that everything we know is as temporary as a setting son. I had a family member rushed to the ER a few days ago, and thank God she's completely fine. She's back home, she's doing her thing. But I can't stop thinking about the call, how it shook me to my core, how my walls of certainty and predictability were breached. It was this unsettling reminder that life as we know it isn't guaranteed,

that things we love, they're not untouchable. I had to look my helplessness in the face for the first time in a while and realize, well, just how little of the world is mine to control. Which brings me back to a conversation I had when I was younger. I talk about my grandfather often in my work, primarily because of a few impactful conversations that we had. And it's interesting to me how relevant they continued to be. I remember a handful of times we talk from childhood. And it's like I piece them together retroactively.

Things make sense as I get older and kind of figure out what it all means. One of my last conversations with him, we went to this little diner called Leos along the Cape Cod Canal. And he said to me, there are things now that seem impossible. But as you grow and you get older, they make sense, right? Even the most challenging things become manageable. And I get mad at myself for not understanding the context at the time, or putting two and two together. But basically, he was diagnosed. Basically, he was diagnosed with the brain tumor and he knew what that meant, right?

And was basically giving me a heads up like kiddo, this is going to be tough. But hang in there. That was one of the first times I've dealt with loss of that magnitude. And when you're young, so many things seem stable, they seem certain. You don't yet get the fluidity of life. That stream is moving and no matter what, it's going to continue to move. Sometimes that means it takes you places and presents realities that overtake the map that you created for the world, what you understood, what you hoped for, that little understanding of what life means.

And I guess I wanted to pick up the baton from that conversation and pass it on to you with maybe a more comprehensive viewpoint. Because I think contained in those words is a message so powerful, so important, that we really can't afford to miss it. It's like, yes, life is unpredictable. And yes, life can hurt and humble us and knock down what we thought was certain it can challenge what we believed and shake our foundations. It can make us feel small in a universe that stretches beyond comprehension.

But at the very center of all of that, We are equipped with something that can't be broken. The only thing that can't be ripped away. The sun around which everything else revolves your ability to endure. Your strength to carry on, to take one step forward. Whether it feels like you're entrenched in the depths of hell or swinging from the stars in the sky. resilience, your ability to not only handle life around you, but rise from the ashes of its

turbulence and its misfortune, that will never leave you if you don't let it. Victor Frankel has said, everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's attitude. to choose one's own way. See, life might be more than weak in control or comprehend. But amidst the might and power of its ocean, our determination is unsinkable. And believe me, there are times when you hear this and think, well, okay, that doesn't affect me.

I'm good. I'm doing my thing, right? Just like I did sitting at that table over eggs and bacon that morning. And man, I hope that's the case, and I hope it stays that way. But life has a way of keeping us on our toes. It never lets us stray too far from the realization that to be human is in some way or another to suffer. It's inescapable, and that's not to scare you.

It's to remind you that, one, storms will come. And two, regardless of how heavy the rain falls or how loud the thunder roars, it will pass, and you are strong enough to hang on until it does. That as you grow and as you evolve, you become more and more capable of seeing the inevitable, not as the world's personal vendetta against you, but is your time to dig deep.

And find within yourself the strength and the courage that was there all along. And that's what that morning was. A message that, look, what's coming will hurt, but you can handle it. And not only that, every time life brings you to your knees, you get back up stronger. That doesn't mean it's easy. But the point is not that it's supposed to be easy. It's that you're capable of handling a world that is not easy.

You're capable of navigating a reality that is not simple, a sea that is not smooth sailing. You're equipped to handle the complex. And sometimes that little reminder is the greatest gift one can receive. There's so much I can't control, but my God, there's so much I can. The reality you have mapped out, the day-to-day, the things you've come to know and rely on, as much as we wish they weren't, they are delicate. Withering away with time susceptible to the intricacies, the trials and tribulations of life.

But your heart, your soul, your world within, that is untouchable. It's the divine, the sacred, it's strength limitless, it's breath endless. So remember, even in the darkest of times, you are the very light you long for. And as long as you believe that, there will always be a path.