Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - MORNING MOTIVATION | Powerful Motivational Speeches | Wake Up Early, Start Your Day Right

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

"Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life." - Mark Twain

The thing about time is that it comes and goes. Tomorrow will make today a distant memory, and as quick as you are here, you'll be gone. What's in front of you is an opportunity to make right now something you'll never forget. You have the ability to write history, to create a story that will live with you forever. Think back to all the days leading up to time.

days leading up to today. All the training, the hours of preparation, the pain you've felt, they have brought you to this moment. They are the armor that you wear. Right now is about execution. It's about taking all those hours and turning them into the best version of yourself. Today is about being better than you ever dreamed you could be. These are the moments you live for. are the insecurities, the doubt, the disbelief. This day is yours. Look your opponents in the eye. They cannot give what you can.

You have built this opportunity piece by piece. You have created an unstoppable force, and it's finally time to reveal that to the world. Let people doubt you. They'll see with time. Let the obstacles stand. You will run right through them. Let everything in this universe tell you know.

You have already told yourself yes. The hardest thing in this world to stop is someone who knows they've won before the game has started. This is your everything. Embracing. Make it so that you never forget today. You are the God of your world, and in your world, you write the script.

There is no tired. You left that in the wait room years ago. There is no unsure. Pushing yourself to exhaustion every day took care of that. There is only when. When do you rise up? There comes a point when you've just given too much. Your sacrifice is too great to accept anything but the very best.

Everything else is noise. It's your day. It will not disappear with time. It will live on. You have earned today. Go make sure the world knows. Every next level of your life will demand a different version of you. Why?

Because life is about reaching outside of your comfort zone. acclimating until you are comfortable and then repeating the process. Every time you leave the familiar you are granted a new set of armor. As Jim Rhone said, if you want to have more, you have to become more. For things to change, you have to change. For things to get better, you have to become better. If you improve, everything will improve for you. And every time we expand our soul,

we are forced to change in some way, evolve. So many of us fall into the trap of waiting for the perfect moment to jump. There is no perfect moment. How could there be? There's no perfect time to step out into a world you're not prepared for. But that's life. We jump and we grow wings on the way down. We step into the chaos and acclimate. By walking into the dark, we are forced to become the light.

This makes staying where you are the most dangerous thing you can do. Let's use our imagination for a second. Let's say you reach for the next thing. You stretch yourself. Move towards something you really want and you fall short. Okay? Time to breathe. Reassess, step back for a second and re-approach.

A little better this time, a little wiser this time. As long as one remains engaged in this cycle, growth is inevitable. But now, let's say you never step in. Let's pretend the idea of moving into the unknown is too much, and you'd rather stay with the familiar pain-free, you think to yourself. But you would, in fact, be wrong. See, that discomfort, one step up, it would force you to evolve, to see yourself as someone who steps into hostile territory and survives.

And maybe it's not pretty. Maybe it's not perfect, but you attack and you survive. And sure, the difference between where you are now and only one step up isn't much. But what about that second step or evolution? Because you'd miss out on that too. And the third and the fourth and the compounding that would completely redefine who you are. From yourself identity to your skill set, from the mental to the physical, you put the whole chain reaction on hold because,

Why? You didn't want to take one step. You didn't want to be uncomfortable in the short term. But discomfort is not a punishment. It is a ticket to everything you could ever imagine. So when the crowd runs out, I challenge you to run in. And when the world goes left, I dare you to go right. Not because the masses are evil, but because human beings are wired to take the path of resistance, but you, no, not you. You're here to rise above the mental constraints that holds so many down, because there is always another level. When you feel good, there is another level, and when you don't, there is another level. And see, our world has been defined, not by the best or the brightest, but the ones willing to throw themselves into foreign arenas and compete.

to see adversity as the answer, not the problem. You want to change your world, then change yourself. You want to change yourself, then go where you are scared to go. Where your heart beats and your hands sweat, turn and face the direction you know you should have been facing. This is about you. This is about what you can become by simply saying yes when most would say no.

No. Today is yours. Not because it was given to you, but because you looked through the haze and you decided it's so. Running into the storm, when the skies are black, the wind pushing me backwards, everyone and everything around me running away in the opposite direction. Yet I can Continue on. Step by step to the heart of the dark looming, ominous unknown. Is there a doubt in some capacity? Yeah, of course there is. When everyone around you is acting in unison doing the same thing, any rational mind's

going to stop and ask why, do they know something I don't know? Perhaps. Yet I continue on. Initially, the struggle isn't even physical. Rain drops fall, the temperature cools, the wind intensifies. I have to put a little more emphasis into every step, but there's no pain. At the beginning, the struggle is mental. It's a war of ideas, that unsettling feeling in your stomach.

And whatever this is, this darkness overhead, it's certainly out of their comfort zone. Should it be out of mine? Am I brave or crazy? Wise or naive? Living on the edge or just being stupid. How fine is that line? Why expose yourself when the world takes shelter? What should I be afraid of? The water, the sound of thunder, the one in 280 million odds of a lightning strike?

Why can't I completely separate my endeavors from theirs? Am I just wired to care this much? Man, just run. Turn up the music, add the miles, count the steps. Remember, I will understand why I'm doing this. This seemingly trivial pursuit, I know the pieces will add up. They always add up. Eddie, just trust yourself.

Push through the heaviness in your legs. Isolate the fear, the anxiety, the emotion that causes humans to act on impulse. To act irrationally. Your job isn't to follow precedent here. It's not to conform to normal or do what anyone else does. It's to continue into the storm. And I do. And then, like all things, it ends.

I arrive. I hit my turning point. My destination is still alive, predictably unharmed, but uneasy. Like I missed the memo. Like I'm disrespectful. disrespecting this norm at the expense of an unwritten social contract. However, I am in too deep now. I'm obviously not calling a cab.

I'm halfway there, so I am running back. And the second I make that 180 degree transition to part two of my journey, I get it. I mean, you really can't help but get it. The light bulb has to illuminate. The wind is now at my back. Not only is it pushing me along, it's pushing me along after having to trudge through it for miles. The tables have turned. Now it's this buy one, get one kind of deal, and I don't think I could slow down if I wanted.

The previous stress and resistance had me work overtime simply so I could acquire and appreciate this feeling of bliss. It reminded me of the old days. Sitting down on the floor after a 2K test on the Urg, dead, winded, exhausted, finding peak happiness in just being removed from the hell that it just transpired. In that window, you see life differently. I could walk up to that same spot and sit down any day of the week and it would mean nothing. But after that, 2,000 meters, it was heaven. And here I am recapturing a small piece of that on this very sidewalk. The sidewalk that I walk down all the time, unaware, unmoved, but now I am light.

I am flying, suddenly becoming less and less aware of my surroundings. The streets are empty, but they might as well be Times Square in December. I'm in a world of my own. And look, I understand why most people would skip this little excursion altogether. The first 50% it is sheer intimidation. The castle walls threaten. But don't people wonder what's inside? Don't they know that you can't learn to fight back at life

if you don't allow yourself to get hit or take a jab once in a while? Look, the point is not the run or the storm or the street. The point is that you don't know what you don't know. And a life of continuously seeking shelter ensures that ignorance lives on. If you continuously follow the crowd, you don't get to carve out a space for yourself.

You don't taste excellence, that moment of temporary euphoria. And sometimes I forget that. Honestly, it's easy to forget that, but that is why I run. There's always the initial question, the physical and mental turmoil, the pulsing temptation to just stop.

After all, this is definitionally unnecessary. I could go away. I could live, wake up every day and exist without this. It's not needed, it's not required, but at some point, whether it's the middle, the end, or after I've crossed the finish line, I remember. At some point, it always hits me. I'm awarded that feeling of completion, a high that can't be found unless you've paid for it. See, people run towards security.

People run towards safety. because it's instinct, because they don't know. These trivial runs they teach me over and over again that you literally do not know what you're missing until you grab fear by the hand and take it along for the ride. And yes, I feel doubt. Yes, I feel the anxiety of the unknown.

But they don't stop me. They don't dictate my result. They are nothing more than those dark skies overhead in the rain in my face. They are along for the ride. I run through them while they watch, silently observing as I transform into something extraordinary. That discomfort, it did not deter me.

It made me, and that's why I run. The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start, John Bingham. We all share a commonality the runner on the starting blocks, the one at work, the one studying, the one trying to create the best life possible for their family. See, we are all at a beginning looking up at an idea. Nothing given, nothing to adjust or react to no just an idea.

And ideas when we are at the bottom looking up, they're deceptive in nature, their size, their weight, their breadth, they like to present themselves as much more than they actually are. And so, to turn ideas into things one needs see themselves, not as some descendant of Mount Olympus tasked with lifting that 2,000-ton boulder before them, but as one armed with an understanding, The awareness that the 2,000 ton boulder before them can be broken down, piece by piece, that it is nothing more than a facade, and while it may stop most in their tracks,

you are simply not most. Not because the world treats you differently, but because you see the world differently. By knowing you are bigger than the sum of its parts, you have defanged this wolf, If you have put yourself in position to do that which makes the world tremble, that which causes even the most confident to doubt, you have put yourself in position to begin. See, there is a time to look at the top of the mountain, breaking through the clouds, powerful

and majestic, and then there is a time to look at your feet, and right now is the ladder. You're not concerned with the big things. No, not right now. Your job is to move forward into this haze, to not see but adapt, to not know but trust. Things will materialize and you know that. But at the same time, you can't control the future. Your battle is right now, and it's with the space immediately in front of you. It's with the thoughts attempting to deceive you.

with the things the outside world will tell you, but forward motion is the antidote to all of that. And so forward you must go. The beginning is always the hardest because our thoughts are a mightier foe than life's obstacles. Thoughts take on lives of their own. They become monsters, demons, dead ends. Obstacles, on the other hand, just ask that we adjust. There is no obstacle that can't be. addressed by stepping into it. And so while the temptation is to sit thinking,

speculating about how challenging the road ahead, this is where you think less and move more, harness the world as it comes because the truth is nothing is as big as it appears to be. Life is incredibly solvable. Every problem has a solution. Every bad chapter ends. Every setback is a chance to be more than you've ever been, But how would you know that if you bow down to the mountains in your head? How would you know that if you never began? So let today be the dotted line you sign with your future self. A promise to be aware that the mountaintop peers over you,

but to not be distracted by its shadow. To take the climb one rock, one step, one second at a time. at a time. Let it be an acknowledgement that nothing life throws at you can't be broken down and conquered so long as you don't get in your own way.

Gone are the days of being held captive behind steel bars of self-doubt and fear. That road ahead is not the problem. It never was. Refusing to give yourself permission to travel down.

It was the problem. So without constraints meet life head on let the trials and tribulations emerge because they will but know that you will rise to meet them let the unknown highlight all that you don't know you can't see fine the one thing you are sure of is that you will one by one transform the unseen into strength and when those thoughts emerge telling you that you've gone too far, that you're in over your head that this isn't meant for you, know them not as truth, but as the only obstacle that can derail and distract. You don't have time for make-believe monsters.

No, not today. So onward you go. To map the unknown, to tame the untamed, to live your life the way it was meant to be lived. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year, your skin is a great place to start. Dime Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin-conscious categories, skin care, beauty, body care, and fragrance, Dime offers simple, spa-worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch,

Dime makes it easy. The work system, our all-in-one best-selling routine, includes a cleanser of your choice, toner, serums, and moisturizers, taking the guesswork out of skin care for your healthiest, happiest skin yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five-star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting Dimebeautycom. That's dimebeautcom. Your best skin awaits. There's a substantial disconnect between what we envision and what we actually experience.

We make the plan, we think it's perfect, we're ready to go. Sure, I have my race plan, I'm going to sprint the last mile. Yep, I know exactly what my career is going to look like. Here are the steps. I'll follow this plan in the morning, this one in the afternoon. But then you're in the midst of the battle. And when you're in the trenches, you quickly realize that you didn't take into account a variety of factors. And funny enough, these factors are what make victory so difficult to begin with. The required patience, the persistence, the instinctual desire for routine, to know, to predict.

And sure enough, that time comes. You go to sprint the last mile, but you didn't realize you'd be fighting just to keep, going, let alone increase your speed. The time comes to take that next step with your business, your career. You didn't realize the market wouldn't embrace your product with open arms. The time comes to put your plan for the day into action. You didn't realize you'd be pulled in 20 different directions. See, the formula isn't as simple as we want to believe.

Why? Because we attack armed with the wrong idea, just. as much as life is about executing a plan. It's also about taking the unplanned and making it work. The unexpected, life's curveballs. You know, they're not entities that lurk outside the scope of your game plan. They are your game plan. The idea is to be brave, not perfect.

It's to be resilient, not flawless. confident, not complete. The best athletes don't train to be perfect. No, they train to tolerate discomfort because guess what, if you can't adapt, you die. If you can't adjust, you lose. Life will never conform to your plan, and people don't want to hear that.

They remain stubborn, unchanged, and what they're left with is resentment and the feeling that they've been slighted by life. The person who plans for the perfect race will always be outduled by the one who comes prepared to conquer its imperfections. The one who will reign in the unexpected, not bow to it or falter in its presence, but own it. The pursuit of victory is not one from which we emerge unscathed, it's messy, it's humbling. If you can't embrace the idea of being knocked down, then get out. If you're too proud to acknowledge that your plans aren't an instruction manual,

you will be defeated. They're saying that you can't control the wind, but what you can do is adjust your sails. Yeah, be prepared, be skilled, be the best at what you do, but be flexible. with the elements, relish in the understanding that the obstacles will come and they will make you stronger. Strong minds win because they don't succumb to events beyond their control, and that choice is always going to be there. You didn't plan for this, but the decision presents itself. Will it be the reason you fail or the reason you succeed? I often ask myself, what differential those who wish for better outcomes and those who do something about it. What separates the dreaming from the progress and the wishing from the reality?

Sure, life is complex. There are a lot of moving parts to understand. But I think this element is simple. Those who build things in life are willing to not only and not only see a reality that hasn't yet materialized. But they also understand that in a world of no, they have to be the yes. They have to believe in their ability

to drive towards finish lines that no one else sees and see meaning cannot come to fruition without that discomfort. Or as Nietzsche put it, one must still have kids. chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star and that's just it. Most people see what is, most people conform they do not create. To change something means you have to be the metaphorical eagle amongst pigeons,

flying above all that, everyone, everything else, superseding the limiting beliefs that shackle others to their one-dimensional realities. But most importantly, it means you can see. You can see what no one else can. You have line of sight to what no one else understands. See, in this world, no one walks up to you on the street, puts their arm around you and says, hey kid, that dream, follow that,

because I can tell you're going to do big things. No one says, hey, that business idea, you're going to thrive next year, I know it. That relationship, it's going to happen. That level of fitness? Oh, I can see it already. Nope. People see what's right in front of them.

And as it pertains to you and your world, your life, people are those pigeons. And so that leaves you with a choice. Do you accept that? Do you blend in, take the scraps you're allowed to consume? the crumbs laid out in front of you? Or do you step back and acknowledge that this is going to be tough? This is going to hurt.

It's going to push me further as a person that I've ever been pushed. But you know what I get in return? That view. I get to live above the clouds with those who don't wait in line. No, they become the main attraction. They transform what is into what will be because the world it has a way of ensuring that we really want what we say we do Greatness in any area of life is reserved for those willing to carry forward when most would turn back To build a bridge to something greater when most people point out that your bridge is not connected to anything

That it's a waste of time. It's trivial useless. I irrational. Good. Changing your life in the world around you has to be irrational. Taking the status quo and shaking it, saying I'm going to alter this landscape is irrational. But from irrationality comes the future. So when you feel like the world is against you, when you have an uphill battle to climb when there are a million reasons for you to turn around, understand that. This is nothing more than an indicator that you are right where you need to be. Against the current. Bringing something new to life. See if it were easy, it would already exist. But changing your life, that makes you an architect of the unseen. So build.

On the days you want to build. On the days you don't build. When they understand build, and when they assume you've all together lost your mind build. Sure, it's not easy, but it's worth it. And when tomorrow comes and it looks a lot different from today, when you've grown, evolved, transformed, and you look back and don't even recognize the person you once were, that won't be because you listen to the chirping of the doubters and the naysayers. It won't be because when strangers told you to give up, you packed your bags and went home.

No, it will be because you rose above all that. They saw empty space and you saw a world undiscovered. They saw your head in the clouds while you built those castles in the air. You were always on a trajectory to something greater. You didn't need to convince them. You needed to convince yourself to unlock the shackles and take to the sky, leave everything that once held you down behind. This isn't about anyone else.

It's about the conversation between you and the horizon that awaits. What if I told you that you already know what must be done? You just need to put yourself in position to do it. You need to unlearn the rules that crippled you, the ideas that confined you. We are in constant pursuit of the thing that will magically write all our wrongs, the answer that will give us something we've never had. No, everything you need you have now. You just need to allow it. to flourish, declutter, simplify, remove all that unnecessary stuff, and walk your path.

Einstein once said everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. And what's great about this is the idea that who we are is not found. It's acknowledged. It's accepted. And I think in our world, there are so many fish, as Einstein says, trying to climb trees that it creates a sense of learned helplessness. We are judging ourselves using the wrong metrics.

equipped with the skills, the characteristics, and the abilities to win in our own arenas, but playing in someone else's. How loyal are you to your own instincts? Do you do what you know is right? Or what you feel obligated to pursue? When was the last time you listened to you? In Tim Grover's Relentless, he introduces a brilliant metaphor. He says, a lion doesn't have to be taught to be a lion.

It just is. It hunts, runs, roams, explores, lives life the only way it knows how. Now, if you capture a lion, bring it to the zoo or put it in a cage, who will carry itself differently. We'll lie down, move around lazily, sluggishly navigate its little space. To passers-by, they'd never know what that lion really is. They'd never know what it looks like in its element.

But despite all this, it is still, in fact, a lion. It maintains that killer. instinct. His characteristics haven't disappeared and if it were released from the cage, it would go right back to doing what lions do, being what lions are meant to be. It just has to ditch the cage. And the point is, perhaps so do you. There's a little light in your soul that waits day and night to explode into something meaningful, where your nature meets your environment, where the I shouldn't do this, the odds are impossible, the I'm not good enough, I can't lose what I have now, where all that fades away, where it's left behind you, and you're finally free to reign over

your own territory, your own life, your own empire. See, we constantly feel like our glasses are empty, like we're missing pieces in need of something. Just one more thing. That will be our answer. That's all we need. And I can say with confidence, it's not about what you need. It's about what you no longer need. It's about mitigating the noise. So what matters. can shine through. Removing those people in your life that drag you down or add no value. It's about getting rid of the things that make your world unnecessarily complex. Removing the need for immediate validation, success, and accolades.

And instead embracing the little hinges in your life that, as W. Clement Stone said, will ultimately swing the biggest doors. We all have the lock, the key, and the map right there, amidst the trivialities of our day-to-day, and we walk right by them, look right at them, we pick them up and put them down. But have we learned to truly see them? Everything starts with that awareness. My life did not change until I recognized that, until I began asking myself questions. never asked before. Big picture questions, obvious questions. But just because it's obvious doesn't

mean it's always intuitive, right? What do I want out of life? What is important to me? What's something I love doing that I can dedicate myself to? That I can commit to being great at long term that I'm so immersed in that when the inevitable down times arrive, the losses, when the doubt and insecurity creeps in, I can keep moving forward because I'm so in love with the process that I don't let the little things like that define me. As Jordan Peterson famously puts it, choose your sacrifice. A life of meaning isn't easy, but there's nothing more fulfilling. Because when you embark upon that journey, it allows for the evolution of the self. We can become something more.

As Nietzsche says, those who have a why to live can bear almost any how. We equip ourselves for anything the universe can throw at us. We position ourselves to evolve. Victor Frankel says man's main concern is not to gain pleasure, to avoid pain. but rather to see meaning in his life. To align yourself with and pursue that which is your reason for living, that's how we transcend the day-to-day life we've come to know. When we breathe in possibility, dance with the infinite,

and of course something of this magnitude, it consists of ups and downs. It's not the easy road, but it's the one worth taking. Our metaphorical lion doesn't succeed every time he's prowling for food. But he doesn't roll over and die. He doesn't recede or quit being a lion. He gets up tomorrow and does it again. Because it's who the lion is.

And while life doesn't unfold until you find that same thing for yourself. And people say, well, I don't know. That's the problem. I have no idea. That's not the problem. That's the essence of life. That's the beauty. You're here to explore and find that for yourself.

But the power is knowing you're not looking for something or someone to save you. You're looking for an environment in which you can best be you. You're looking for the right terrain to share your gift with the world. If you have what you need, then you're not looking for the product. You're looking for the delivery mechanism, the vehicle to nurture and transport your value to a world that desperately needs it. You're looking to build yourself up and in the process amaze yourself. Look, what you're capable of is beyond comprehension. It's limitless, almost unfathomable. But it is, as Ryan Holiday says, a confidence that must be earned.

So start now. earn it. Let yourself succeed. Your intuition knows what feels right and what doesn't. But the seed must first be planted. So make today about setting yourself up for success, turning off the idea that you're one piece away from completion, one minute away from starting, that you're almost ready. No, you are ready now. You have what you need now. You know what's necessary now. You just have to be your own ally. Put yourself in position to be yourself. Let your value shine, double down on what matters to you.

Look, it's not a game of acquisition. It's a game of courage. Do you have the courage to be who you are? To follow that potential, that possibility into the great unknown. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start. Dime Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a

skincare company. With four skin conscious categories, skin care, beauty, body care, and fragrance, dime offers simple, spa-worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch,

Dime makes it easy. The work system, our all-in-one best-selling routine, includes a cleanser of your choice, toner, serums, and moisturizers. Taking the guesswork out of skin care for your healthiest, happiest skin yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures

every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five-star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting Dimebeauticio.com.

That's dimebeautcom. Your best skin awaits. Somewhere along the way, we all come face to face with the gatekeeper, watcher of the road ahead, protector of the path before us, he is your defining moment. The reason you either go home or push forward, he's where your story ends or begins. And see, I've met him before many times this gatekeeper, guardian of all that's worth possessing. acquiring and conquering.

I've witnessed the pain he inflicts, the doubt he manufactures, the obstacles he creates. And what's interesting about the things in life worth having is that they're never easy to obtain. The universe has this way of making sure you really want those things you say you want. Because a lot of people talk. and they wish and they project. But what they fail to see is that it's not until the wheels hit the road that the truth materializes. There is a cost for everything. You don't get day without night or courage without fear or bliss without pain.

The road to every kingdom travels through hostile territory and the harder you play. pull that arrow back, the more power it contains as it leaps forward. Resistance in life, it's not a detriment, it is a simple triage process in which only those willing to endure the cost of excellence are able to access its bounties. You can have all the world if you give all of yourself the question is, when the gatekeeper approaches in its decision time. What's your move? Are a product of the pain we endure, the sacrifices we make, the struggles we overcome.

Let's not complicate that, which is simple. It's not the universe, but your mind that needs convincing. Because once that floodgate opens, water is walkable, walls are climable. Once you empower yourself, the status. quo is left powerless with no option but to watch you bend life to your will. It's not during the easy time, but the midst of your journey, the heart of your race, when you most want to pack your bags and call it a day, that that gatekeeper stands before you, hand extended, whispering that you want it but maybe not that bad. And it's in that exact moment that you dig deep,

Look him in the eyes and show that there was never a doubt. Only belief. And no matter what awaits, you'll endure, you'll break through. Because gatekeeper or not, that's who you are. Every once in a while, for a brief moment in time, we need to pause. We need to take a breath and ask ourselves, who we are. Of course, not in the literal sense, not the reflection staring back in the mirror. But in the context of the road you've already traveled, how far you've come. Because it's

easy to become consumed with what's ahead, especially when you can start to feel that finish line. You can see the top of the mountain. When you know everything is about to be on the line, your greatest test awaits. But here's one of the greatest secrets I've ever been told. That test is not about right now. It's not even about the future. It's about the foundation you've already been building and trusting yourself to be you. It's all those times. It's all those times you. It's all those you could have said no, but you didn't. How you, like so many others, could have taken that easy road, but you opted for something greater.

No, my friend, this obstacle before you is not where you prove or make or create yourself. It's where you simply verify who you already are. Cash in on a prize that's been years in the making. It's where you validate the price you've been paying for as long as you can remember. And what you need to take with you, what you need to understand right now more than any other time is that you aren't here to simply survive or navigate foreign territory. No, you were made for this moment.

There's a saying that pain is temporary, but quitting is forever. And that simple quote has got me through some of life's greatest trials and tribulations, most challenging times. Because to put it simply, when we're overwhelmed or we're amidst life's chaos, our minds don't scream out, oh hey, you've gotten through this before, and you'll get through it again. They don't remind us of our strengths or reassure us of our dedication. No, when we feel like we are neck deep in chaos, all we see is what we're not. That's why people quit. They become consumed with the dark, forgetting that the answer is a light switch away,

overlooking the fact that they already have everything they need. So let this be your reminder. That getting across the finish line doesn't require some miracle. It doesn't require you to do what no one in here. humanity has ever done before. No, all it asks is that you believe in yourself to hang on when others would let go, to continue forward when you most want to turn back, because it's always darkest before the dawn, most challenging at the peak. When the roar of the crowd becomes audible and the trophy visible, find it within your

yourself to rise amidst the pressure, not to shrink, but to expand, to be the most powerful person in your life, you. Because right now, in this moment, you have arrived. Years from now, when you look back, make sure you remember one thing about this moment, that you gave everything you had, that you leaned in on those late nights and those early morning wake-ups, the hours upon hours in the books, the preparation, dedication, and the resilience, that you knew who you were and let it manifest and lead you into the future. See, we all find ourselves at this fork in the road, the one where we have a decision

to make. Will I survive or will I thrive? Will I exist or will I truly live? And in the race of life, it's when our hearts hounds in our chest. The blood flows through our veins. Our lungs cry out for air. Our minds beg us to stop, slow down, relax.

It's in that moment that we must carry. on, we must be our best. We must put all those little pieces together to create our masterpiece. To breathe life into the foundation that you have been standing on this whole time. See, this moment is yours. If you're willing to endure, to hang in just a little bit longer, give just a little bit more. If you're willing to put all of your, yourself into the task before you, you may just be a maze at what life gives back. Every run tells a tale. All those streets, sidewalks, and paths paint a picture.

Each footstep enshrines forever a moment in time that comes together to comprise. than now. For my time in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, it was asking, why not? Why not find out if I could be a little faster than yesterday? My first dance with the clock. Waking up early, running up snake pond road, sun shining in my face, inhaling that crisp morning air. It was running a little along the canal where the distance was precisely mapped out in paint on the ground below, tattooing a path that seemed to go for as long as I wanted to push forward. It taught me that we could do amazing things when we decided to, that we have more in us than we could ever imagine. In a sense, Cape Cod was my eyes opening up to the idea that

What life gives us is directly correlated to what we ask of ourselves. So ask for a lot. In Boston, it was exploration. It was pushing myself harder and further, but also stretching my worldview wider, a time for transformation. It was beginning to see the mundane, the commonplace for the wolves in sheep's clothing that they are.

I began exploring city street, like I simultaneously began exploring life's possibility. I saw how taking new routes often came with two distinct components. One, an unsettling nervous feeling in my stomach, and two, an eventual gratitude for finding the courage to go there. The world will never tell you to go where you have not yet gone. It will never assign you a map and hand you keys, a plane, or a bus ticket. That desire must be cultivated internally. Boston was me realizing the unknown wasn't a border keeping me in.

It was a hand extended. In Roanoke, Virginia, it was, in a sense, a rebirth. Moving away post-college. Everything was new, was foreign, but everything was exciting. I had to learn who I was in new surroundings with new people. My Nike running shoes took me through woods, downside streets, into the heart of downtown. I ran and I ran and I ran because with all that change it was one of the few constants in my life. It brought me to the realization that with so many moving pieces, so many things shuffling

in and out, there are parts of me that are non-negotiations. that in life it's okay and even necessary to change, but one should never lose themselves in that process. They call Roanoke the Star City of the South for the giant glowing star that lights up on the mountain overlooking the city. Perhaps a reminder to never lose that North Star in our own lives.

In South Florida, Florida, it was about connecting the dots. I'd been relentlessly doing. Now it was seeing. Seeing myself as that person, as someone ready for more, worthy of a spot at the table capable of creating monumental change. Those soft sand runs reinforce the notion that I get stronger when the world moves under my feet.

hundreds of thousands of footsteps under the hot sun reiterated that I'm willing to do what is often deemed unnecessary or even over the top. And lastly, living in the luxury of no winter reminded me to appreciate the sun, the perks, the advantages and the victories we collect along the way, but to never take them for granted, to be ready. Because life's winters don't always wait until after, fall to show up at your doorstep. See, every step we take is a lesson.

Every street, sidewalk, and path is part of a story. And sometimes we don't understand until we look back at the chapters. We don't get it until we have the luxury of hindsight. I didn't know that I look back on Snake Pond Road as sacred ground as a launch pad to everything that would come next. No, in the moment, it was nothing more than a temporary escape from a world that felt bigger than me. I didn't know I'd see the city of Boston is the place that taught me to question the normalcy of everyday life. To show me that one could be moving awfully fast and still going nowhere at all.

No, in the moment, it was merely a decision to dip my toe in the water, to entertain. the curiosity and sense of adventure that always seemed a few feet ahead. I had no idea Roanoke, Virginia would be where I learned that, as Emerson said, to be yourself in a world constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. That there are non-negotiables, and shining down above all the noise and intricacies of everyday life exists the path and the resources to become who you were meant to be. No, in the moment I was simply stepping off my branch and landing somewhere new. I didn't know South Florida.

I would be my consistent reminder to level up. To hold tightly that intersection of love and value, to find gratitude for what I have and maintain faith in bringing about what has not yet materialized. at the time I was taking my life, my business, and my running shoes to warmer weather. You may not see it now. But your path, the one that led you to today, is the right path. You are exactly where you need to be for the beginning of your next adventure.

But here's the thing. You. You must keep lacing up your shoes. Keep getting up in the morning and chasing those sunrises. Keep dreaming, growing. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Because the world has so much to give you. But you have to allow your feet to carry you there.

You have to give yourself permission to take it all in. The normalcy of right now. Down the road will end up being anything but normal. These steps. are the steps that make you who you are, so own them. Believe in them, and most importantly, keep taking them.