Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - PREPARE YOURSELF FOR GREATNESS | Powerful Motivational Speeches | Listen Every Day

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” – Sun Tzu

Find something to make yours. I connect every few months with some of my good friends to strategize, kind of reflect back on the previous quarter plan for the new one with each of our businesses, kind of share ideas, stuff like that. And I was chatting with my friend Keith about life before he found success in what he's doing now, the struggle and the turbulence he faced, as well as ultimately his decision,

and that's entirely what it was, to turn things around. And I've talked about his backstory before, so I'm not going to get too much into it, but essentially he grew up in a very negative environment. Dealt with a ton of adversity, but got through it. Started his own national business, installing and repairing commercial pizza ovens,

and the guy's just crushing. And, you know, our conversation in that moment wasn't so much about the doing. It was more on the overcoming and how mentally we had to recreate. create ourselves to have any chance of moving beyond what we knew. I've talked about it a little before. Kids are simply not taught in school how to thrive, how to build, how to ask more of

themselves in the world. They're taught to follow instructions, to do what they need to do in order to pass the exam, to progress to the next level. Then there's a gray area because I'm not saying this is totally valueless, but I am saying that anything beyond that requires. requires a reworking of sorts. You ask anyone who stepped out of that cycle, and they'll tell you the mental and psychological shift

that needed to take place, it was almost overwhelming, right? It's a lot, but it's imperative. I recently looked up the word entrepreneurship, and this is the definition. The activity of setting up a business or businesses taking on financial risk in the hope of profit. And in my mind, it is, the risk precisely that's challenging, that brings us so much pain, but also contains within

it the reward. It's one of the craziest dilemmas we face. You know, you'll have to endure some of the worst times of your life, but because of that, you'll get to experience highs that would otherwise have been almost completely improbable. We have to rework the thinking that says discomfort equals run away. It's like, no, discomfort is. equals the price of something better, and sure it's by no means mandatory, but it's where the upside lives. You have to train yourself to step out into the chaos with the expectation of taming it. And yeah, everything could go wrong, but also everything could go right.

And just imagine. Imagine what that would look like. That possibility alone validates the risk. We just need to convince ourselves. And that risk, by the way, is not just financial. In fact, most of the time it's not. It takes a variety of shapes in our lives. You run the race, you risk losing.

You go up and talk to the girl, you risk rejection. You pick up and move somewhere new. You risk winding up somewhere you don't want to be. And maybe temporarily things do fall apart. part, but maybe you win the race. Maybe you find the love of your life. Maybe you relocate to the happiest place you've ever called home. Calculated risk is the beginning of everything that matters. And so back to the convo. We were talking about the different risks we've taken, how some chapters were fun, some were challenging, and some were both, and how for me there was even from time to time

a conversation where I was asking myself whether it was really worth it. You know, when you're uncomfortable, the mind wants to do one thing, get rid of the discomfort. And I had to convince myself, remind myself that I'm someone who risks good to pursue great. Risk hurts. And somewhere in that conversation was when Keith said he remembers the exact point the risk became worth it. The discomfort became easier to manage. We're so used to taking orders to playing scared that the incentive just wasn't there

until, Keith's words, it became mine. The most invigorating thing he ever did was find a pursuit to call his own. That's powerful. His business injected him with a new energy and in essence a new life because he suddenly had a stake in the game. And I think that's what so many

of us in so many areas are missing. The risk appears bigger when it's not counterbalanced by something meaningful. So find something to make yours. The simplicity there is beautiful. Complex ideas expressed in simple ways are always worth holding on to, right? We are programmed to lose because we are programmed to live according to someone else's standard, to think small, to ask ourselves, how do we not screw up? But when you can step outside that little self-imposed circle, and instead ask yourself what's something I can create that is my own, something I care about, that I can nurture, invest a part of me into,

that's when life really starts paying dividend. You're not existing, you're living. Or as I've recently discussed, you're empowering yourself to not just sit in the room, but be in the room fully. I use entrepreneurship as the model for this discussion because that's been such a huge part of my life where I've been injecting my time and attention and, yeah, risk. But the point is not that everyone needs to stop

what they're doing and become an entrepreneur. That's one path of many, obviously. The point is that there is a risk-reward dynamic in entrepreneurship that we should all understand, extract and inject into our own lives where it best applies. We've learned to settle in so many ways that we must know there is tremendous value in asking what is it in my life I want to invest in?

Make mine. Give myself the opportunity to experience the excitement of defining the things I care about and watching them grow. Whether your current arena is entrepreneurship or motherhood, fatherhood, academics, a particular relationship, some combination of these, or anything else. To make magic out of the mundane requires we first make it ours. We take ownership, responsibility for the journey, we accept the risk and chase down the rewards.

You can do amazing things when you realize what you're capable of and commit to its manifestation. So in a world where yes, we are conditioned to fail, step out from those subtle shackles of learned helplessness. You are anything but helpless. It's just that you've yet to reach out and pull your dreams into your orbit. You've yet to put a stake in the ground and say this matters and it's time to see it through because once you do that, the good stuff begin. Sometimes all we need is a reset. A new beginning, fresh start, a transformed perspective. Do you remember those pictures that used to make their way around from time to time

and looked pretty obvious at first glance? But if you really examined it, you would see that the picture of the young woman or whatever it was was also an older woman, right? Differing based on how to see how to see how to see that the picture of the young woman or whatever it was, was also an older woman, right? Differing based on how to see that. how you looked at the lines. And depending on who was looking, they might have a proclivity towards seeing one or the other. But when made aware of the picture's duality, they could always see both. And there's something to this. This idea is something we should lean on, because I'll tell you what. Sometimes our natural proclivity is to see the thing that's not helpful.

The first thing we see is an excuse or self-pity. The first thing we see is a list of insecurities or doubts. And we have to remember to take a step back and look again, to examine harder. Because it's amazing how differently things evolve when you make a point to see their value. For example, let's say someone has something you want, something you want, something you will. wished was yours. And maybe your default is, you know, you are less than. Your life is not what it should be.

But if you step back and looked again, you would see a few things. One, we're all running different races. You're competing against you, not anyone else. Two, think about everything you do have that someone else would give anything for. And three, if you truly do want that thing, how about applauding yourself for having goals, for having desires, for wanting to push the boundaries of life. Now the question is, can you seek to truly understand what that desire is and map out your path to bring it into existence?

This is nothing but an opportunity, right? And how could it be anything else? Life's challenges, life's losses, they are wins. They contain within them the DNA to create change. to progress, but one must be able to move beyond the instinct to label it a problem or a net negative. There are and will always be wins where you choose to see wins. As I've heard Tony Robbins mention on many occasions, this isn't closing your eyes and saying, there are no weeds, there are no weeds, there are no weeds when your garden is full of them.

No, it's understanding a simple truth. You'll never leverage value that you don't believe is there. Seeing it is always step one, because it gives you a foundation to stand on as you build. It's picking up the pen and starting that next chapter. It's choosing your worldview. If you lose money, how would one react to? I can't believe it's gone. Things will never be the same.

My life is over. Versus, okay, obviously I learned how to acquire it in the first place. Time to do it again. I'm wiser. I'm more aware and life is abundant. The person that wakes up thinking the former would probably have a hard time getting out of bed. The person telling herself the second story would be motivated to go make things happen.

worldview has incentivized her. That's why thoughts become things. How we think directly translates into how we act and our daily actions become our reality. Look, we've all found ourselves in situations where we struggle to see the good in things, where life knocks us down and the opportunity seems to hide itself. But that's exactly what it's doing. Hide It is there. It's always there. It's there when you've lost something. It's there when you've taken a wrong turn. You get the point. And I'm going to differentiate here between simple and easy because the idea of stopping and forcing yourself to find the positive. It's simple. But it's not easy. It's oftentimes not the natural thing to do. But if you can ask that of you. yourself, you will find the winds that others walk right by. You'll be the change you want in yourself

because the outside world will act as the toolbox to make that happen. Remember, we often can't control what the world gives us, but we can always control what we do about it. And that ability is what I believe separates human beings and their level of growth, success, and achievement. Right, next time you find yourself down, down and out. Sure, do your thing, handle it how you must. But don't forget that golden rule.

It's not what you look at. It's what you see. And when you examine the world around you, point to one, however small value add that will pick you up, get you back on your feet, and move you forward to that more ideal reality. we face in life is not personal. If you remember this, you disarm every adversary, obstacle, every complication you'll ever face. So, quick story. Recently, I was renewing a lease for my apartment. Something that usually is pretty simple, right?

Only this time, things were not simple. confusion, chaos, misunderstanding, after misunderstanding. I received emails and letters saying, you know, you need to provide these documents in order to renew. You need to have X, Y, Z information submitted to as a sap. I'm sitting here thinking, guys, you have all this info. I've lived here a year. Same guy. Let's put two and two together.

And after a while, I started to get truly annoyed. eventually to the point of taking it personally. So I stopped what I was doing and go down to the front office thinking I'm going to go scorched earth here. I really wanted to emphasize how absurd and ridiculous all this was. I opened the door.

It just kind of stop in my tracks. First thing I see is a crowded room filled with tenants asking for things, making requests, looking for info. And the people that work there we're so patient and kind running around doing their absolute best to make everyone happy and get everything done. And almost immediately I realized, Eddie, you made this about you.

This is not in any way about you. Basically, I created this fallacy that because things weren't working the way I wanted them to, then there must have been some universal resistance, right? There's an idea I heard a while back that very rarely steers me wrong. It's that two things can simultaneously be true at once. So in this case, is there opportunity for these guys to tighten up a bit? Bring more clarity to their operations and best practices? Yeah, certainly true.

But on the other hand, was building this up as a them versus me match in my head dumb and counterproductive? Yes, also true. The world will always provide advice. That's not news to anyone. It's just what the world does. That adversity will take a thousand different shapes and appear an infinite number of ways. But here's the deal. Life is neutral. Things just happen. They aren't good or bad. They just exist in the ether. We as storytellers decide to put a charge into things. We decide whether it's happening to us or for us. We choose. And that's the takeaway here. There's power in remembering not to take things personally in any aspect of life. Because when we do, we actually lose our grip on reality. We become emotional and not rational. And this is visible everywhere. Take rejection, for example, something we all deal with. It's not personal. The person on the other end is thinking about themselves. They're locked in on

their own incentives. They're not thinking about you and however you feel about this, it's just the truth. So assess the situation, sure, maybe find some areas where you can improve and carry on. Being mistreated. Again, not about you. As the saying goes, hurt people, hurt people. Same goes for criticism and hate online. It's something that a lot of people truly fear. It will almost always be true that people who are more accomplished than you or further along in their career trajectory won't waste time bringing you down in the comments section. No, it's people saying things hoping that their comments will get approval and attention so they can feel validated.

Their actions are being carried out for, ready for this, themselves. and to misdiagnose or take it as a shot to the heart, well, that's creating a battle scenario that doesn't need to exist. It's not them versus you, it's them versus them. You're just in the crossfire. Now, does this perspective or point to not take things personally mean that we abdicate personal responsibility? Does it mean we say, well, it's not me, it's the world,

so not my problem. No, of course not. This perspective gives you the power to do the right things and the necessary things because you understand that the problems you face are not a giant indictment of you as a person. Getting angry creates a scenario where you reallocate your energy from doing what's best for you to instead being mad at him or her or this group or that circumstance or the world in general. You know, bad things happen. And by the way, they happen to everyone.

Everyone gets rejected at some point. Everyone gets let down by people close to them at some point. Everyone loses their way at some point. Everyone has their expectations fall short. Everyone has pushback. It's not just you. It's the world doing what the world does. And there's 8 billion of us running around operating in our best industry.

trying to navigate a big, crazy world that's often incredibly difficult to understand. So with this perspective, going forward, you know, my lesson from a few weeks ago, what would I have done differently during all that chaos with the apartment? A handful of things. First of all, remind myself that in the grand scheme of things, it's trivial. It's just not that important. Two, understand incentives. These folks aren't trying to make things hard for me.

for me. They're trying to do their jobs well so they can live their best lives, which brought their attention to other things. It happens. And three, when you're calm, you can actually solve the problems at hand. When you don't stack your problems up to look like adversaries working against you, when you instead see them as merely a challenge or puzzle to be solved, life starts to look a lot of different. It just feels different to walk around as though life is on your side, as though hardship is nothing more than the water necessary for the seed to grow, as though all those challenges you face are opportunities being presented to you. Because I'm not sure you can simultaneously fight and solve. I think one of our most important decisions is to select one. You can make the rejection

an opponent, the criticism, a rival, you can make the disorder your nemesis, or you can realize that all of it falls squarely into the box that is life. Pieces to be taken out one by one so that you can construct the ideal. Life comes down to the advantages that exist all around us, the choices we make, to live freely with the wind at our backs or confined by the walls we build around ourselves. And sure, your current obstacles might be because of decisions you've made, maybe even decisions you wish you could take back. But the current moment right now in this second is neutral.

It does not hold a grudge or have an agenda now, right now is simply right now. And the same way that 2 plus 2 is 4. Four is not good or bad. It doesn't want you to win or lose. It's just four. Same goes for the crossroads before you. And that puts the onus entirely on you to decide what you will make it all mean. Will you slow things down to find clarity?

Will you open your eyes to see the value? Because look, there will always be a delta between reality and the stories we tell. tell ourselves about reality. That's just how human beings work. It's how we've managed to survive for millennia. So understand that and gift yourself the narratives that bring you closer to the place you want to be. The road before you will be challenging.

Not because its pushback is personal, but because amidst the resistance, you'll find the components you need. to live your very best life. Freedom lies in being bold. Robert Frost. Something caught my eye on Twitter not too long ago. It was a headline referencing the boldness of wolves in the wild. So I clicked it to delve a little deeper.

It took me to an article by Emma Maris. And here's the summary at like a 10,000-foot view. Okay, basically there's a parasite called T. Gondi that infects animals and then causes those infected animals to act bold, perhaps even reckless in some situations. And the article states why and goes into some great detail, but for now I'm going to jump right to a specific point. Because there's a part where the article mentions how two wildlife ecologists, Meyer and Cassidy, studied wolves at Yonge. Yellowstone for 27 years. And upon studying them, they find something very interesting. After taking blood samples from 229 wolves, they found that wolves infected with that T.

Gondi parasite that, again, makes them act bolder, were 11 times more likely than uninfected wolves to leave their birth family and start a new pack. The infected wolves were also 46 times more likely to become pack leaders, which Maristates are often the only wolves that breed. And so this appears to portray a direct link from boldness to increased social status and possibly even reproduction rates. With that boldness comes risk, sure, but with risk comes reward upside. Now, obviously, the day-to-day actions of wolves at Yellowstone is not an apples-to-apples comparison with human beings functioning in society.

But personally, I can't help but feel the value contained in the case study. In fact, it was my thinking about it while falling asleep that prompted me to find the article again and share it. For the simple reason that I know there are places in my life that I can. can be bolder. I know there are places in my life where I can dial up that risk factor in exchange for results that supersede what I have now. You don't get more without giving more. And I know there are places I can give more. In fact, I'm pretty confident there are places every single one of us can give more. See, here's the thing. Being bold means drastically different things to different people. And it's in this truth that the magic is found.

Boldness for one person might be completely different from someone else. It might be more travel. For another, it might be taking on a project at work. For another, it might be leaving a detrimental situation. For someone else, you know, going through a low point or deeply challenging time, it might be simply getting out of bed. We are all operating on different planes at any given time. My bold today won't be my bold next week.

That's just the way life works. But here's what I do know. We can all find within ourselves that courage to be bold in whatever arena we are in. And every once in a while someone will say to me, yeah, but Eddie, can't you just be happy where you are? Why does it always have to be the next thing or bigger or better or more? To which my response is, look, of course we should be grateful for what we have. Of course, we should appreciate the gifts and the beauty that surrounds us day in, day out,

because it's there and it's infinite. But, and you knew there was a but. Human beings are purpose-driven. Our happiness is often derived from our progress. Our journey is the destination. And we often find when we look around that we have given pieces of ourselves away sometimes without thinking about it. Perhaps we become stagnant

with areas of ourselves that can be elevated that are destined to evolve. I love looking back at those courageous moments in my life. They mean everything to me. You know, I like to say it's the small things repeated day in and day out

that make us who we are. The vast majority of the time, I believe that to be true, but those pivotal moments, those opportunities that our consistency creates for us, while boldness in those instances changes everything. Walking onto a stage when you've never spoken before, when your body is physically rebelling

and you don't want to walk on a stage is everything. Calling U-Haul, packing up and leaving a situation that's no longer in your best interest is painful, it's instantaneous, but is ultimately. everything, making an investment that you believe in, deciding to hire someone with incredible vision and talent, being vulnerable enough to share your thoughts with the world, these things are risky, they are bold, but in your world, they are everything. And so the obvious connection here is our desire to lead in a world seemingly void of adequate leadership. It's setting an example.

It's not settling for the ground floor when the sky is the limit. Yes, some of the world. on all count. But it's also leading yourself. At times we forget just how important that is, that you need to lead yourself to something meaningful. Significant change does not come along without your initiating it. No doors open if you don't knock.

The world will only give you what you ask of it. And I'm here to remind you that asking more the world, yes, it's hard, it's uncomfortable, it requires you to be more today than you were yesterday, but you are capable of that, you are bold enough to be that. Robert Frost says freedom lies in being bold. I believe that's because in your courage lives the infinite. Upside, so powerful that one simply cannot grasp it while standing still. So go. Go find those areas of life, your life, where you know you're holding back, where you know when your soul you have more to give, and breathe life into them. Knowing that sure, and being bold, missing the mark is a possibility. But in never leaving, it's a certainty.

If you never go, you will never arrive. So find the question. courage to ask more of yourself because more there is.