Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Make A Change | Motivational Speech

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." - Joseph Campbell

Welcome to the Your World Within podcast. Eddie here. Before we dive in, I want to let you know that this week's episode is brought to you by Audible. So as I mentioned before, both on the podcast as well as my YouTube channel, Audible is how I consume most of my books. It's audiobooks while I'm running, driving, and multitasking. There's just no better way to grow, to evolve than taking in books. And so if you go to audible trial.com slash your world within, you'll qualify for a free audiobook download when you sign up for their 30-day trial membership.

There's no obligation to continue this service. You can cancel at any time. You also get to keep the free audiobook. So again, audible trial.com slash your world within. That said, let's dive into today's episode, Making Change. There's a quote that states, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Which means that your reaction is drastically more important than the circumstance. And that's critical to know.

It's critical to understand that nothing. No one in life has more power over your own situation. And there's an old story that hits on this point exactly. the father and a daughter. And basically the daughter's complaining. She's complaining about life, how difficult things are. She's just know how she's gonna make it, in whatever it is she's doing.

I mean, the bottom line is she's tired of the day to day, right? And her father gets this idea. He says, come with me into the kitchen. And he gets three pots of water, puts them on the stove and turns the burner zone. As soon as they start boiling, he drops a potato in the first one, an egg in the second one, and some coffee beans in the third one.

And after some time goes by and they boil a little bit, he pulls them out, right? He puts the potato in a bowl. He puts the egg in a bowl, and he takes a ladle, and he puts some of the coffee in a cup. He says, what do you see? She says, well, I see a potato. I see eggs, and I see coffee. He says, yeah, but look closer. There's more there.

And she goes and she touches the potato, and it's now soft. And he hands her the bowl with the boiled egg, and she takes the shell off and breaks it open. She sees that it's hard inside. Then finally he asked her to take a sip of the coffee, and she smells it. She takes a sip. His smile comes to her face. She says, so what does all this mean? What are you trying to say?

And he says, well, the potato, when I dropped it in the water, it was rigid, it was tough, it was uncompromising. But in the boiling water, it became soft, wheat. Then you have the egg that was basically the opposite. This delicate layer protecting a liquid center and the boiling water made it hard. And then there was the coffee. That wasn't just changed by the situation. It created something new. It took the same adversity and used it as a lever to bring something beautiful into existence.

He then looks at his daughter and says, look, when things become challenging, when things become difficult, which one are you? What's your approach? See, maybe the question is not about how challenging the situation is, right? Maybe we've been asking the wrong question. Maybe it's how do you transform yourself and by default, the world around you? How do you take your strengths, your values, your loves, your joys, your happiness? And let that lead you into something bigger. When life gets hard and it does, what do you become?

I always remind myself, you know, we are not defined by life at peak state. As much as I wish that were the case, right? We're not shaped by the easy days or the times that we floated by. because those times are great, they're enjoyable, but they're not what make or break us. It's the times that challenge us and ask us to be what we have not yet become. That's the good stuff. And this is another one of those simple but not easy type things, because on paper it makes sense. It's understood.

But it's an outlook that manifests over time. It's slowly stacked piece by piece and brick by brick. realizing that every situation provide you with tools to make something out of an apparent nothing. And then it waits, right? Because fate is in your hands. And I can certainly think of, you know, times in my life, that's one of the reasons I love these stories. I can reflect where each one of those pots of boiling water was relevant. I can think of times I was too headstrong, like the metaphorical potato, I thought, success would be easy. I thought projects would be simple to execute. I spent months doing things that just weren't good because I didn't ask what is the world need. I asked myself, what do I want to give the world? And there has to be a marriage there, right? And it was a

quick reminder that the world owes me nothing. I was humbled or softened as the story goes. I've been the egg, I've been timid, I've been uncertain, thin-skinned, worrying about what what people would say or the content I was creating, worried about perception. How would things look if I failed? And very quickly, I learned that when life is a game of comparison or one-upmanship, when you do things for reasons and people other than yourself can't win, you overcompensate, you do things for the wrong reasons, and you lose yourself, you become hardened. And then there's the good stuff, right?

Getting to the coffee, not bowing down to the circumstances, but shaping it. Not letting life dictate how the story goes or the fate of your character. And what's interesting is I'm pretty sure that being that metaphorical egg and the potato, they lay the foundation to become the coffee. The life lessons. The falling down, the picking my ego up off the food. floor, learning to trust myself, not be led by the opinions and expectations of others. You essentially learn that you can take the world around you and change it, that it is malleable, it is flexible.

You have that power. You have that ability. It's up to you to believe it. And that's critical because no one comes along and cosigns that understanding for you. It's an internal process. you start to learn that things aren't there to provide instruction. They're there to propel you. But can you see the unknown as the opportunity,

the obstacle is the way, and the loss is the armor that you pick up during the journey? And so, you know, all of these words essentially come to one point. And that point is you have so much more control over your life, than you think you do. As I've said before, you are stronger than you think you are. You are more resilient than you can even imagine. And when life tests you, and again, it will,

remember that the challenges are not happening to you, but for you. The world isn't taking away what you have, it's giving you what you need. so long as you're willing to adapt with it, to grow, expand out, because you not only have the ability to change yourself, but the world as well.