Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - SHOCK THEM ALL | Best Running Motivation | Wake Up Positive

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

"Confuse them with your silence, shock them with your results" - Anonymous

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, calm and 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 in life. that forges the iron. There's a saying hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.

It's a cycle. And 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 manufacture some. Because that's the only way to grow. Progress is happiness. Victor Frankel and Mansearch for meaning, you know, he says purpose is to find from struggling. 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. 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, 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. 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 hearing Ryan Holiday differentiating between passion and purpose. He called passion temporary, a dopamine hit. It's the excitement before 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. 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.