Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Let Go Of The Old You | Best Motivational Speeches

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

In this episode, we explore the courage it takes to step beyond who you’ve been. Growth begins when you let go of the old story and speak the new one into existence. Declare the version of yourself you’re becoming. Own it. Step into it. The universe responds when you do.More from Eddie Pinero:Monday Motivation Newsletter: https://www.eddiepinero.com/newsletterYour World Within Podcast: https://yourworldwithin.libsyn.com/Stream these tracks on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2BLf6pBInstagram - @your_world_within and @IamEddiePineroTikTok - your_world_withinFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/YourworldwithinTwitter - https://www.twitter.com/IamEddiePineroBusiness Inquiries - http://www.yourworldwithin.com/contact#liveinspired #yourworldwithin #motivation

Would you ever wonder how much of you has materialized? Like if what F. Scott Fitzgerald says is true and our lives are defined by opportunity, even the ones we miss, then how much remains in the ether? And I don't think it's about playing a game of what if. You know, that would be endless. It would be self-defeating. No one's perfect. I don't even really think it's about making a right turn instead of a lot of a lot of. left. Because as long as you're moving and moving with conviction, life ultimately brings you where you need to be. But more, my concern is the steps never brought to pay. My ideas on the hatch, my opportunities, I either knowingly or unknowingly left on the shelf. Because it didn't seem real

enough. Like a Broadway play between my ears that as a spectator I knew would end, after all, that's what stories do. How much of ourselves have we cast aside as simply the things we don't say out loud? At first, it's infinite. We've yet to be taught to limit because limits aren't things, their ideas, and ideas must be adopted. That's why they say some of life's best things were done by people too ignorant to know they were impossible, too naive of the notion that they couldn't say them out loud.

Then it's comparison. They have what I want. But it was meant for them and not me. how delusional to think I could have it. How crazy to think that life has yet to be written, and I am an author. My date is with normalcy in the box where I keep those things we don't say out loud, and then we look around and we see highlight reels.

We see awards and vacations and smiles, but we don't stop to think maybe they're just like me. Maybe they're people who struggle and question themselves and doubt the road ahead. No, it must be the past diverged. They took happiness, and I took those things we don't say out loud, and then there's everyday life. when things don't go as planned,

when the world presents curveballs, and you haven't learned to hit off speed, so you feel small and you feel inadequate and ill-equipped, and you could reach out, but that's not cool, that's not right. That's something that you don't say out loud, but we keep it in, like all in, and eventually it becomes the if-only's, and I wish I had. It's the quiet envy gazing longingly towards those who just cared less,

who realized maybe life's not as serious as we make it out to be, who turn thoughts to things, not by burying, but by embodying them. And maybe that's the trick to unlock the gate, keeping your perceived reality from the possibility of a new one. The one you could create,

if only you promoted your fleeting thoughts to forward progress. See, dreams can fail to come to fruition in two places, in your head and outside of it. But at least outside, it has a chance. At least outside, you can take the common, normal, everyday background,

and make it the background. drop to your movie where you play a lead role. But it must be accepted and acknowledged, not thought of or even whispered, but screamed so that the details and the trivialities that exist now work for you. That's right, they are now yours. Not because you thought about it, but because you reached out a hand and you took. You asked the world for something. And in life, it will always be true that you don't get what you do not ask for.

So when you find yourself staring up a wall comprised of self-defeating narratives and manufactured limits, be ignorant, be irrational, be the reason your dreams have a chance. And when you look around and you see more and wonder why you don't have it, know that you can, you're allowed to, if you sacrifice you will, but you must believe you are worthy of it. Not in the back of your head where you keep your locker combo and movie quotes, but in reality where words bounce off lips. And when you feel like life is treating you unfairly,

like they're happier or have it better, know that life is peaks and valleys, not just for you but for everyone. And how you internalize that and carry on makes the difference. And when you feel lost or stuck, you are not hopeless, but in progress. Being broken down so that you can be reconstructed, stronger, better.

Victory is not. in hiding those struggles, but accepting them as the difference as the reason you created the miraculous. Not because you had dreams, but because you said them out loud. There's a saying that some people feel the rain. Others just get wet. I've always found this interesting, this idea how the same subject, same situation, or occurrence can be interpreted so differently. It can plant the seeds for such different outcomes. Like Yashimi and Koga mentioned in their book, The Courage to be Disliked, well water is 60 degrees,

and it's always 60 degrees. In the summer and the winter, but depending on what time of year, right, the makeup of the outside world, that 60 degrees feels different. The water didn't change its circumstances did, and our thoughts are no different. It's not the world that writes the story.

We do. And every second moment day is merely an interpretation. Does time tick by? Or is it driven into a state of flow? Is it transformed into something more? Was losing an indicator that, hey, maybe you're not good enough? Or is it your motivation to be better than you've ever been? Is your day an allegiance to the present or an invitation to change? Chase down tomorrow. See, the world doesn't get to tell the tale. The world is paper. It's ink. It's ideas.

The world is everything you need to decide how your story's going to go. How does he see the world? How does she define reality? That's the question. Because you don't need to change the world. You need to change the way you see it. And you don't need to change who you are. You need to change the imaginary shackles you've placed around your ankles that are limiting the heights you could reach.

In fact, the world, as far as I'm concerned, is an accumulation of thoughts, ideas. It's 8 billion individualized movie screens attempting to interact to coexist together. And when you look at it like that, it's not that your mindset plays a role or it's kind of important. No, it's that it narrates the play. It's the glue that ties everything together. What you see is what you get. And this isn't a one and done thing. It's an everyday thing.

Because there's always going to be occurrences in our lives that challenge us to threaten our understanding of who we are and what we're capable of. There will always be the temptation to make the opportunity into the problem and the hero, into the villain. But why forfeit that control? I remember hearing that if you find time to be grateful, both in the morning and at night it changes your life. Not because the world transforms, but because it reinforces the perspective you need.

We are lucky to be here. We're lucky to have challenges that push us forward. Lucky to have ups and downs that bring us closer to the people in our lives. We're lucky that chaos and discomfort open a door for transformation on the other side. And look, I get life isn't perfect. And not everything can be great all the time. But I do believe that if we can bring ourselves to stop, to breathe, to even focus briefly, we can find value in any situation. What's in front of you, it exists, right?

It's the well water. You can't go back in time or remake the obstacle at your feet, but you can always decide how to make that work for you. And that's a superpower. And I use that. I use it when my short-term ideas or videos or projects underperform. I use it when people let me down. I use it when in the moment I'm either under or overwhelmed. The question, where is the win?

In this spot, this situation where most would hang their heads and let the outside world rewrite the story, how can I find a way to hold mine high and maintain my own accountability? Extreme differences in life outcomes are... so often prompted by such subtle realization, subtle decisions. Their reason to stop could be your reason to not only carry on, but thrive. And the best news is you don't need approval or authorization. You don't need the stars to align or doors to open up. You just need to give yourself permission to see the sun amidst the clouds,

the hope amidst the doubt. You have to remind yourself that there is always something to cling to, Always a second chance, there is always a win. All you have to do is to see it. I woke up last night and I remembered my debt to you. Being that I stand by the promises that I make, I jumped out of bed and I walked over to my desk. I turned on a light and I began writing. At a minimum to explain myself.

but a best case scenario to provide some reassurance that every storm ends that nothing is forever and that someday without question I'll make you proud see things haven't been the easiest lately and it's funny sometimes things seem so intuitive sometimes they make so much sense and then sometimes it feels like you open up a novel right in the middle and it's in a language you can't read

You know, life feels more complex than it really is, and I feel smaller than I really am, but don't be concerned. I've fought my way through worse. I promise you you'll be satisfied with the result. And yeah, you might have noticed that sometimes I face the obstacle of juggling two sets of standards. You know, two definitions of success. Mine in the world. What I love and what matters to me versus what will increase my life. status, my standing in society.

And honestly, it pulls me in two different directions sometimes. Makes me think back to years past and that discomfort of experience, you know, standing on an empty foundation. But believing someday something meaningful would stand there. Realizing that when you put your head down and when you block out the noise, you can finally hear the most powerful voice of all. your own. That's why you take L's in the short term to acquire meaning in the long term. I've found that courage before. And I'll find it again any second now. Don't you worry? Sure. You might have seen that every once in a while I forget about life's abundance. I mean, I just do. I know it's true, but it feels sometimes like the world pushes me to forget. You know, I start comparing myself to other people and I start thinking about what I could lose.

what people might say about what could go wrong. And it's like, sure, I know I'm the gatekeeper to my own mind. I understand that. In fact, I cherish the idea. But I guess sometimes doubt catches that gatekeeper napping and slips through. I always catch him eventually, though. I've had doubts before, and really, all I did was to keep moving by them. Kind of like that time I went snorkeling in Key Largo.

you had to make your way through this jellyfish field to see an underwater statue. My first thought was this is crazy. But then you move in and you realize they just exist. They don't have control or an agenda. And if you find the courage, they become meaningless. You can float right by them. So don't worry, I'll swim through and you'll see me on the other end. And I will catch that view.

Not for Facebook or for Instagram. Because in a way, I owe it to myself and I owe it to you. I didn't make these promises to run when things got challenging. I made them because they meant something. And yeah, from the outside in, things are not perfect. I get that. I understand. But if you just hang tight, if you just remember,

that I've been there before. I've climbed out. I've come back. In fact, the deeper, the valley and the darker the night, the clearer the answer always becomes when I emerge. And it may be a journey, but however long it takes, I've gotten there. And I have to admit, yeah, it feels funny writing a letter to myself,

but I need you now more than ever. You've always been my toughest critic, and I appreciate that, but now I need you to be my biggest fan, to remind me that life can be confusing and seemingly contradictory, uncertain, and even chaotic. But that doesn't mean I'm not right where I need to be,

right where we need to be, and if you'll just believe in me, if you'll hop along for this ride, you'll see that as sure as I'm sitting here writing to you now, I will make you proud. Everything around you has a story. In fact, many stories. And more importantly, our lives are the culmination of these stories. See, we don't identify things through an objective lens.

We see them in relation to our individual beliefs, our needs. Strangest it sounds, our lives are almost entirely fiction. They're arbitrary. When was the last time you got into your car and thought of it as nothing more than metal in part? Probably not recently. Right? We see it as a gateway to where we need to be. Mobility, freedom.

Just like art isn't brush strokes or sonic vibration. It's an emotive escape. We give meaning to things, and those meanings vary. world as it exists through our eyes is entirely subjective. You ever wonder how something can be a problem to one person and a solution to someone else? Or how deeply held political beliefs can be so contradictory? How can a movie come out and half its critics say it's amazing? The other half say it's subpar. Life is subjective. It's an infinite amount of tiny stories that come to to create our world and everyone that you walk by has their own and here's why

that's worth discussing here's why it matters because we fall into the trap of using these make-believe guidelines after all that's what they are to define ourselves we deem other people's subjective norms as truth the benchmarks for our own pursuits consensus is good well then it must be good they say it's bad well then It must be bad. From the perspective of a creator, one of my most important realizations was that feedback of something I've created

or a lack thereof doesn't define the value of the work. I still think some of my best work is essentially undiscovered. Some of the things I've thrown together in 10 minutes have been seen by millions of people, and that doesn't change how I value the work with little recognition. That's just our emotions drawing false conclusions. Here's a different example. Let's say there's a baker, right?

And he's got a bakery in a neighborhood and does great work. Right? His shop's been open for a decade. He's been in business. But one day Oprah walks in. Takes a bite, loves it, recommends it. Suddenly his cake is everywhere. Suddenly they're extraordinary.

Same question, right? What changes about the cake? Nothing. What changes about the baker? Nothing. Excellence lived there the entire time. Did his work become more? The second he got of power?

No, it was simply recognized. And this understanding, the reason I'm bringing these examples up is because knowing that is crucial to whatever it is you're trying to build or become in your life. Because these narratives matter. The good, the bad, the ugly, they don't stop coming at you. They don't stop peeking around the corner trying to influence your story. And just because you're not where you want to be yet, yet just because you haven't seen the external reward it does not mean you aren't brilliant

it doesn't mean you're not on track towards excellence or you're changing the world maybe you are that baker before Oprah skips on into the shop I don't be someone who confuses everyone else's story with reality that makes it incredibly difficult to take control A lot of people we call brilliant now, they weren't thought highly of along the way. In some cases, quite the opposite. And thankfully, they understood the subjectivity of their brilliance. That if you're confident in your voice and your message,

if you sacrifice and dive into expertise in an area, the value rises to the surface. Society will adapt and conform to you. simply because you didn't bow down to it. There's brilliance there. It just needs to be believed in and refined. Even when others don't get it, even when it's abnormal, even when your passion receives no validation.

See, brilliance manifests itself brick by brick, and it's very easy for passers-by to laugh at that unfinished frame of the house. But eventually it comes together and the layout is beautiful and the architecture is stunning and your defiance carves a little niche for itself somewhere in the depths of reality. Then the light bulb goes off. Then it's understood. Maybe you were right all along. Allow yourself to be vulnerable.

You forfeit your greatness. If you don't risk failure, you have no shot at being the one who makes a statement. If you don't risk them laughing at you, you have no shot at them clapping for you. If you don't risk trading today for a future outcome that's uncertain, you'll never know the fortune that that future help. Yeah, being vulnerable, it's difficult. It's hard. It hurts.

but it has to. It's the ocean that separates what you have from what you want. The mountain that stands between who you are and who you want to be. Being vulnerable, it means you stop looking at what can go wrong and you start thinking about what can go right. Because every question's a double-edged sword. Do you release that song? Because it could flop,

but it will also kickstart your dream. Do you make that first trip to the gym? Because you'll probably look like you have no clue what you're doing, but it could also lead you to feeling better about yourself than you ever have before. Do you apply for that promotion? Because you could be let down. But it could also lead to a career transformation. Do you see the dynamic here? Every major decision comes with risk, and that's why people avoid making them. Standing out, taking the road less traveled, they shake our deeply rooted desire to fit in. Right at the foundation, they conflict like fire and water.

See, so much of our stress comes from a need to belong, to preserve a reputation, to be cool. You want a fun experiment? Watch how fast being cool turns into mediocrity. It's doing the things that are not cool. over and over again the constitute greatness. The ones who are different, bold, out there, they change things. The ones who are okay being called irrational,

okay being laughed at, okay with failing and not getting it the first time around. If you do not let yourself be vulnerable, you never experience failure on a significant level. You don't fail, you don't learn, you don't learn, you don't grow. And if that's the case, forget about the top of the mountain. Safety, comfort of flawless reputation gets you a nice seat at the bottom looking up at greatness. At those who saw the opportunity and were willing to take a chance.

So while you climb, keep your eyes on that big picture, remember that we outgrow our worries. Through each stage of our lives, we look back and we realize that our previous priorities were misaligned. We worried about things that didn't matter. allowed our decisions to be guided by variables that were irrelevant. And that's the beauty of risk. It escalates this realization. Pushes further and further past the little things that mean less and less with each step taken. Your mistakes will not matter.

Criticism from strangers will not matter. What will matter is whether you took control and did something meaningful with your life. whether you followed your heart and your instant. And I know it's hard, I know it's uncomfortable. I can't sit here and guarantee the path will be paved out in gold. Everything will go how you want. But I can promise this, you will learn, you will adapt and move forward. I can promise that the critics and the naysayers get smaller and smaller

until they fade out of the picture altogether. And most importantly, I can promise that if you don't do anything you will not go anywhere and that is the only way to fail. So trust yourself. Trust the process, believe that you are extraordinary and go make your magic. Why is it that when we look back on our lives, it's never the easy days or the simplicity? It's not the calm that changes our reality or makes us who we are. Don't get me wrong, common simplicity, they're wonderful, but

they're not transformative. And why would they be? Why would we change or seek to obtain more without a reason or incentive? It's times of struggle, of turbulence. It's when life was hard that we had to rethink who we are. Reshape the way we look at the world. Because without chaos, you don't get calm. Without the storm, you don't get those crazy neon colors and golden rays it leaves as it passes by. In order to triumph in any capacity or any area of life, there's always a sacrifice that must be made. The adversity is the fire that forges the iron. There's a saying hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times. Good times create.

weak men and weak men create hard times. It's a cycle. This is generally used in a sociopolitical sense, and I think in a lot of ways it applies today, but where I've really found it useful, where I've found value in it, is at the personal level. Because what I've noticed is that growth also appears to have a cyclical nature.

And when we're in a rough situation or overcoming an obstacle, we have to push, we fight, we grow, Sometimes without even realizing it, we achieve a result, and by default, this transformation that in one way or another makes us something new. But then it becomes easy to level out, right? And that's the challenge. It creates this period of stagnation. It's like we made the jump, and it becomes real easy to stay there.

And that's why I have found value in when life is not providing resistance to man. manufacture some. Because that's the only way to grow. Progress is happiness. Victor Frankel and Man Search for Meaning, you know, he says purpose is to find from struggle. If things are too calm or simple or quiet, life begins to lack meaning and that's never a spot we want to be. Life is about the pursuit of something. You just have to figure out what that blank will be. You get to decide which mountain to climb. There's a story about a butterfly making its way out of a cocoon. And it makes a little hole. It starts attempting to push its way out.

Someone walks by, they see it struggling, and open the cocoon up to help the butterfly out, right? Thinking that they did this great deed. But in doing so, that butterfly has now lost its ability to use its wings to fly. Why? Because the strength that was necessary to fly would have been forged when he fought his way out.

The butterfly was deprived of the very thing it needed. to become something more, and that's the point. It's easy to get lost in the now and seek to eliminate everything that doesn't make the moment more comfortable to remove that which doesn't make things easier. But whether we're talking about collectively or the complacency in our individual lives,

we have to remember that avoiding discomfort isn't the answer. When your biggest problem is Amazon, taking five days to deliver, or that your feelings are hurt by someone's comments or opinions on social media, you've lost track of yourself. You may be living in a world

lacking the resistance necessary for growth. Maybe it's time to ask what matters. And I remember when I lived in Boston, I'd walk around listening to podcast downtown, and I'll never forget here in Ryan Holiday differentiating between passion and purpose. He called passion temporary, a dopamine hit. It's the excitement before the,

the project begins, the beginning of a journey, the honeymoon fate. But passion alone falls short. And it falls short because anything worthwhile is hard. It tests us. It repeatedly presents us with those metaphorical cocoons we have to fight. We have to earn our stripes, grow our wings. And if we stop at passion, there's no reason to battle on. To take the punches, knowing that they will create for us a tomorrow full of infinite possibility, and that's where we need purpose. That's why it matters. We need something bigger to march towards, a destination that's meaningful. to remind us that those challenging times, they're not a burden. There is no poor me here.

They're the fire that sharpens us. That whispers to us, not only the importance of carrying on, but the power contained within ourselves to do so. This world, it is not stacked against you. It's never the problem, or the obstacle. No, it's the opportunity laid out at your feet. And it's in those very times when we're uncomfortable, when we're unsure, when we don't know where to draw our strength.

That we need to remember it comes within. It's an idea that is brought to life through courage, through understanding, through the trials and tribulations of life that didn't intimidate or hold you back, knowing that life has given you everything you need to blaze your trail. So don't be afraid to let it take you somewhere new. Sometimes when you don't know where you're going, the best thing to do is go there. A wise man once stated that an object at rest stays at rest. And while his rationale is a little different than mine, I'm gonna borrow from his premise. Right? Because when you moot, even if you don't know where you're going, you put yourself

on a collision course with something. You put into existence an entity to react to. Some call it destiny. Others call it fate. I call it simply initiative. Because if your journey is hypothetical, you have nothing to celebrate nor correct. A sailboat can adjust its sails once it leaves the harbor, right? It can learn from and manipulate its surroundings. Make sure it arrives at a destination, right? It learns and adapts along the way. But from the harbor, it speculates.

It expounds upon a path that might be straighter, might be faster, might be more thought out and tied together than the crazy. sailors who took off for the horizon, but in actuality, it goes nowhere. In the real world, it is stagnant, and I could be wrong, but I'd make the argument ten out of ten times that the real world is where we want our results. And my proof? Well, a journey that started with insurance and evolved into music, in songwriting, in audio production, then video production, and creative writing, then a sweet spot that

that kind of combined everything, a spot that didn't make its way to my inbox with an exact address. A spot that required a lot of failure and lessons learned and disappointment, but man, more than that, so much fun. My proof is sitting down right now in real time, letting my fingers create a bridge from nothing

to something of value. By the way, after sitting here staring at a blank screen for hours, It's just starting. Could I be wrong? Could I screw up? Could I wildly miss the mark? Yes.

In fact, it happens more than I'd like to admit. But here's the beauty. Even if I am wrong, I now have something to work with. Something has been brought into existence. And well, that means I'm officially further along than I once was. And I've heard over and over again that there is no perfect moment,

that you have to just go. And the idea, I mean, it makes sense. It's impossible not to understand, but it's one of those things that until you feel it, it doesn't mean anything. How can you miss something you've never experienced? Well, to put it in a way that help me understand, you aren't going because,

eh, what do you have to lose? You're going because everything is to be gained. the answers that you pick up along the way, like the little coins you pick up in Super Mario, right? You have to start collecting pieces of a puzzle that you can then arrange. I truly believe that one of the most important ideas we need to hold on to moving forward as personal agency, self-belief. And I say that because I feel like I'm watching it slip. There are cases where we literally don't know or understand that it's within our own ability

and control to change our lives. No person or group or letter in the mail is going to come along and green light your idea. In fact, you might not even really know what your idea means or how it will look. And that's not only okay. It's amazing. It's the marble that you get to chisel away at

to create something. See, life is not the perfect, of a plan. Life is the courage to make your way into a world that no one really understands or knows anything about. And I'm not talking physics or biology or quantum mechanics. I'm talking about the real life that is emergent from those areas of study. Right? There is no perfect formula for happiness. But it will always be true that immobility or standing still is antithetical to progress. identical to progress. And there is plenty of data that supports the idea progress equals happiness. We want to move towards. So that's what this is about. Here's to not being scared of what we don't know.

Because somewhere in the realm of what we don't know exists what we need most. So yeah, stop waiting for the perfect moment. And yes, begin. but not because it's an ultimatum. Do it because the things that make life fun and intriguing and exciting. And ultimately worthwhile, they live on the other side of your front door.