Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - This Is the Year You Come Back to Yourself | Powerful Motivational Speeches

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

You only get one life. Not a rehearsal. Not a second draft. This one.And most people don’t fail their dreams, they drift away from them. They wake up, move through the day, survive the week, and tell themselves they’ll really start living “someday.”This is your reminder to come back. Not with pressure. Not with fear. But with intention. This is the year you stop sleepwalking through your own life. This is the year you focus. The year you lock in. The year you choose growth over comfort.Leave the past where it belongs. Step forward with clarity. Move with purpose.You weren’t created to exist, you were created to live. This is your life. Be here for it.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

Our lives require failure. Like our lungs require oxygen. And when I find the world around me lacking in the resources that I need, it's because in so many ways I have forgotten to breathe. To step out my walls of comfort and breathe in lessons waiting to be taught by the greatest of teachers' life. Life, the unpredictable and often unremarkable miracle. The book that reveals itself through experience, that tells tales only in hindsight,

our world is a book in which we choose our own ending, and so we must fail. Because failing means living, and we were meant to live. We must fail because every failure is the, a mark of a poet, an artist, or an author bringing this story one step closer to its resolution, continually walking up to a blank wall and making a mark, a single trivial mark, a mark that's misunderstood at best, but likely scoffed at, ridiculed. But each mark gives meaning to the one before it. These marks, they become chapters, become narrative shifts, become stories. Every failure you

throw against this wall becomes part of a mural. It's an element of beauty before the work can even be deemed beautiful. Yet we continually misunderstand. When you hang your head in disappointment, when you see only the smudge of paint you through against that wall, you are oblivioning. You are oblivion. to the fact that you're making something meaningful. So here is my challenge to you. I dare you in the midst of the Mona Lisa you are creating to see it before it's done.

I dare you to be strong enough to fail, not just once, but over and over and over again, I dare you to keep your eyes focused, locked in on what's in front of you. When everyone you know hides their failures, when they scream of every little wind for all the world to hear, I dare you to understand what they do not,

to cherish your failures, to maintain trust in the unseen. And when all you want is to get there, I dare you to see your greatness before you arrive. I dare you to look in the mirror and see the hero inside you right now. I dare you to do that. I dare you to take your struggle and see amidst the pain your purpose, your purpose that will lift you up when you've fallen

and will carry you forward when you're lost. I dare you to see light when there appears only darkness, and when none presents itself, I dare you to light the spark, to be the answer you need. I dare you to stand up to the human tendency to embrace security over adventure and predictability over growth. I dare you to walk into the darkness of night, knowing that today's unknown becomes tomorrow's foundation. And when it hurts, like truly hurts, when you look around, and can't remember why you began or what's pulling you forward.

I dare you to close your eyes and imagine looking back and thanking yourself for taking this path. Every low is a courageous step towards transformation, and if you've forgotten that, I hope this reminds you why it all matters. I hope you remember why this mark, the one you're making right now, right now is part of the masterpiece you've been longing for.

It's taking you exactly where you need to be. What's up guys, Eddie here. And before we jump into the next chapter, just a quick note. So, as many of you know, every single video that I've ever put on this channel has been created with the intent of building momentum in your life. If you want something physical to anchor that momentum, momentum we've created the brand AGNS or always grateful never satisfied for that exact

reason athletic apparel that embodies the very ideas and concepts I talk about every day because you're watching on YouTube or Spotify we've created a code for this exclusive community YWW 20 you can use that on the website AGNS. Lifestyle we're right under this video on YouTube all this stuff is there in the shop again code YWW20 gets you 20% off the entire store. It's a great way to support the channel and also elevate your journey. Let it be a reminder to keep showing up.

Appreciate your time. Always grateful, never satisfied. On to the next. Your constant entertaining of worst case scenarios is why you aren't miles ahead of where you currently are. Let me explain. Last weekend I was on a sunset hike in Scottsdale.

and we just reached the top of the first climb. We paused for a second, took in the views, had a few sips of water, and then turned to carry on with the hike. We probably made it about 10 feet when we heard a frantic voice behind us. It was like, hey, hey, and I stopped, turned around, pointed my finger at my chest.

You talking to us? Yeah, the woman said. Just completely out of breath. She goes, It's almost sunset. And I saw a sign down there in the parking lot. Her breathing was so heavy, she had to stop every few words. So the sign, it said, at sunset, they closed the gate,

that every car still in the parking lot's going to be locked inside the gate, won't be able to get out. Another pause to collect herself. And I was just wondering, do you know if this is true? Will they really? Have you been here before? Is there any chance I'll be stuck here? I said, well, I haven't been here.

sunset, so I don't really know. I started kind of racking my brain thinking about some of my favorite hikes in the area, you know, Gateway Pinnacle Peak. Then Rose mentioned, I'm pretty sure the gates do close, but they have a sensor that when you drive up to them, even at night, they open and you can easily get out. And I said, ah, okay. So I just yelled back, We're not totally sure, but we think the gates open for you. Even after sunset, even when it's dark, you should be fine. I don't know, she yelled. I just don't know.

I have to leave. I'm out. I got to go. I got to go. And just like it was in a movie, she turned around and just sprinted down the mountain. It had, you know, the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland vibes. And we kind of chuckled and just, you know, hey, you never know what you're going to come across around here, do you? Turn back around.

carried on with our hike. Now, important to note, I'm not knocking or making fun of that woman. Let me tell you why. That's been me. More times in my life than I can count. Blowing minor inconveniences way out of proportion. Terrified that something might go wrong. And it's derailed progress.

and growth, change, and excitement, you know, all because the path wasn't certain. I've said no to trips and projects and opportunities. I've ignored the thing I knew my soul was pulling me towards. I've walked away from adventures. I mean, you name it. Because what if, somewhere along the way, a metaphorical gate closed. Oh, the irony of refusing to move because someday you'll be. because someday you might be stuck.

And then you turn that into a full thought experiment. Right? Let's say this person was correct. You go down after dark and the gates locked and you're stuck. You have to call law enforcement to open it up. Inconvenient, absolutely. For everyone involved, admittedly, not ideal. But why is our instinct to act like we'd starve to death?

at Tom's thumb trailhead. Our brains flash this image of ourselves writing a goodbye letter to everyone we know with a scroll and a quill pen for some reason. I'm not sure why. Dear loved ones, they close the gate. Tell Michael he can have my signature John Mayer guitar. Right, when you play it out, it's just, it's lunacy.

It's insane. The worst-case scenarios we create are complete nonsense, almost always. Because look, it's one thing to be reckless and careless. It's another to live your entire life in bubble wrap because you may trip and fall somewhere along the way. Now, obviously, this is way bigger than that story I just shared. This is about the trap of leaving so much of life on the table

because we placate to the downside. We constantly entertain all the things that can go wrong, forgetting that, one, almost everything is solvable, and two, mostly two. The question, what if everything works out? Hey, what if things go right? Why is that possibility so often left out of the equation? What if you leave that toxic relationship? And sure, perhaps after a brief period of chaos and stagnation,

things get better than they've ever been. What if you start the business? And yeah, maybe Rocky at first. But after that, it completely changes your life. It causes you to level up as a person while also putting you in position to add value to the world you could never have in your old life. What if you decide to level up your fitness?

And you bet the first month or two at the gym you feel like a fish out of water. But ultimately, you transform mentally and physically in ways that leave you just feeling different, more confident in every room you walk into. Why don't we think about the upside in scenarios like that? You know, when we turned around and finished that hike, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever experienced.

The orange and purple sky, the path through the way. the rocks that felt like something out of a Lord of the Rings movie. The view from the top during blue hour, when the sky is still painted all those colors, but it's dark enough that the lights from the houses way down in the valley look almost animated, like a cartoon or something. Closest comparison we came up with was the aesthetic from the movie Polar Express. Almost doesn't look real.

And I just think, like, imagine missing. that because of something as trivial as a parking inconvenience. In the grand scheme of things, what's more meaningful? What's more important? What matters? Big picture. Guys, we are missing life's sunsets because we are worried about the shadows they cast. Life is meant to be lived. And I get, by the way, how messy things can feel and sometimes are. But the simplest of experiences remind us our brains, they want safety, not growth. They want comfort, not adventure. They want to know at the expense of ever diving into the unknown.

Remember that the most important, valuable, memorable, beautiful things you will do in your life are tied to some sort of risk or trade-off. And look, I'm not telling you what's right, wrong for you how could I but what I can do from this room in Scottsdale Arizona is remind you that most if not the vast majority of things that don't go the way you want them to are reversible solvable think really hard about the sunsets you say no to because of life's metaphorical gates Oftentimes that decision equates to giving up an entire world of possibility because you bowed down to a single, minor, inconvenience.

That's not you and it's not why you're here. Don't chase the made-up ghost stories. Chase your sunsets. Oh, and just for the record, after the most beautiful hike of our lives, we drove up to the gate, it automatically opened for us. us and we drove home. But you already knew that. The flat ground always arrives. You might not know what this means, but you will. It's been the truth of every run I've ever taken, every mountain I've ever climbed, and overall, every challenge I've faced in life. It's the reminder that's carried me when my lungs burned.

My legs felt like lead. It's been there when the finish line seemed impossibly far away. And the idea kind of reoccurred to me perfectly a few days ago on a run, a pinnacle peak, which is a duo of mountains, about 20 minutes up the road from me. Essentially, two connecting mountains. You run up one,

and then down it, and it connects to the other mountain, which you run up and then down. Once you've completed that, you kind of turn around and you just retrace those steps. Up, down, up, down. It takes about 40 minutes, and I've done it about 10 times now. And the hardest part is what I've called Climb 3. That's the point where you've run up, down,

up, down, you turn around to do it all again, and it's technically your third ascent. You know, the start of the journey back. And it just so happens to be the steepest part of the climb and the longest part of the climb. It feels like endless steps. And as you can imagine, running uphill like that, your heart races and, you know, your lungs,

they gasp for air. and when you're in the thick of it, right, precisely in that moment, you know, you've already run halfway, you're exhausted, you know, your legs are starting to feel heavy in the thought of another 20 minutes, it's almost impossible to compartmentalize. It feels overwhelming in totality. Here's what I realize. That feeling, that overwhelming sense of discomfort, you won't feel that the entire run. In fact, you won't even feel that the entire duration of quote-unquote climb three. Why? Well, because even during climb three, there are these little 10-second stretches where the ground flattens, and it creates this tiny reprieve, a gift. And you might

laugh and go 10 seconds. That's nothing. It's more than enough for your body to reset. Like, funny enough, 10 seconds is an eternity. It's enough to catch your breath. It's enough to, you know, get yourself together as you give your feet, your legs the gift of running on flat ground for a few seconds. It gives you everything you need to carry on. And all runs are like that. You know, it's not necessarily pain until the end. It's pain until the next reprieve.

And there's a giant difference between the two things. You just need to make it to the flat ground. which is there and will arrive sooner than you think. And every time life feels too hard, similarly, there's always a reprieve, always a patch of earth that flattens out, always a singular moment to breathe. And so the power in being able to put your faith in those moments is life changing.

Let the course take care of the rest. You know, in the next day I was talking to, my videographer Brandon about this metaphor. You know, I've realized this running yesterday. Does it make sense? Does it resonate? And his eyes kind of lit up. He's like, yeah, it reminds me of aid stations in ultramarathons. You know, because the runners, they're not thinking about 100 miles.

They're thinking about the next aid station. That place where you can breathe and regroup and recover and set out again. This allows the miles to break down into manageable peace. The impossible becomes possible in bite-sized chunks. That's life. You know, we break under the weight of forever, under the illusion that the pain or the uncertainty or the uphill climb must last for eternity.

But it doesn't. Life is not a hundred miles sentence of suffering. It's a series of aid stations, a handful of breaths on flat ground. So when it hurts, But when it hurts, don't carry the burden of the entire journey on your shoulders. That doesn't help you. It doesn't help the situation.

Don't let your mind convince you that the climb never ends. Now, carry what's in front of you. Run to the next aid station, the next reprieve. Find your next patch of flat ground. It's there. And the truth is, life is not built in lifetimes. It's built in moments. It's not conquered in decades, it's conquered in seconds.

And if you can master the seconds, if you can take the next step, if you can make it to that breath of air, you can handle the rest. That, my friends, is how you move mountains. It's how you turn impossible things into inevitable victories. Not by taking the whole weight of the world at once, but by trusting the intervals of great. along the way and when you look back you will realize what felt unbearable was only temporary what felt infinite was just a climb and guess what you climbed it the reprieves carry you the aid stations save you the flat ground reminds you that life doesn't ask you to be invincible it asks you to be faithful to the next step

So the next time life feels too heavy, don't think about the entire journey. Don't measure yourself against the whole mountain. Just get to the flat ground in front of you. And then the next one, and the next one. That's how impossible things are done. That's how ordinary lives become extraordinary stories. One reprieve at a time. In your darkest moments, remember, flat ground always arrives.

There has to come a time when it's now or never. Well, you look at your reflection and realize that the cost of waiting is far more expensive than the cost of stepping out into the vast unknown. In every journey, that's when life effectively starts. But here's why this is so tricky. What's caught me off guard so many times in my life, it's the many shapes that wading takes. See, waiting is not always sitting there and doing nothing, not at all. Sometimes, waiting is just the bare minimum. It's moving forward so slightly and so slowly that you can essentially trick yourself into thinking that you're progressing,

into thinking you're making it happen, when if you really stopped and looked, if you were honest with yourself, if you really took a second to review, to analyze, you'd see that you're leaving almost everything on the table. You're not creating progress, you're dancing with the idea, of progress.

Sometimes waiting can mean just going fast enough to not have to look at the fear you're hiding behind. That's reality, right? I think it's a very normal thing, but I also think life is too short for normalcy.

I think we can do better than normal. And I believe with all my heart and soul that the world has for us the spectacular. Sitting there on the top shelf, waiting for those who can acquire the self-belief and the awareness to reach out and grab it. In how crazy a thought, to realize that we could have been sitting next to the very thing we've needed for days, months, years,

but never taught ourselves to extend our hands and reach. When I look back the most important moments in my life, We're not tangible acquisition. And see the flashy things that try and capture our attention, right? The money, the condos, even social media growth, business growth, whatever it is you're working towards. Those things are wonderful. They are benchmarks that hopefully align with your North Star, but they are not the difference makers. Not at all, right?

They were the byproduct of what really mattered. They weren't the moments that moved the needle. My greatest moments were mental shifts, cognitive transformations. That's why I do this for a living. I see how much can change when we step back and look at life just a little differently. It was my realizing that I was demanding too little of myself, that the world won't see greatness in me until I see it in me. That shift that pushed me to demand a moment.

more of myself, seek bigger challenges, value my work to a greater extent, charge more for my services. And that mental shift is what made some of those externalities possible. It's realizing that if you want it, more is on the table. That yesterday doesn't define you, that it's never too late to begin again. That everything you need you have, right? These are the ideas that truly change lives. They make the difference. And if we don't become aware of these things, we leave them in the rear view. We walk right by them. In other words, the most important moments of my life were when someone or something shook me

and effectively said, hey, look around you. If this is what you want, fine, enjoy. But for your information, there is more out there. And if you step up just a little, if you do just a little more, if you pivot and come at this thing a little bit differently, you will further that reach. You'll create another ripple effect that will transform your life. But we must stop and look around. A good friend of mine, and this is just the other day, right? We're having lunch. We're talking about marketing.

And we always joke that marketing is just a part of the business that I don't particularly enjoy, right? Necessary, but not my favorite. And we're going through kind of different strategies, ideas. And he presents one. And I say something like, you know, I don't need to do that. It seems a little over the top. And unfiltered, he goes, man, you're hurting your reach. Like what good is that metaphorical restaurant that's not on anyone's radar?

You're going to be the best pizza shop that no one knows about. And it just kind of hit me, right? It's like, man, I needed to see that differently. Maybe there's room to be a little more aggressive. Again, one example of many. And not every time is the idea or opportunity the right one or necessary one. Right? But at least you stopped.

At least you thought about it. At least you contrasted where you are with the potential upside of doing. something differently. That is where we leave opportunity on the table. You know, we most often, myself included, paint regret as this, the result of this blatant walking away from something. A deliberate declaration, sort of a, oh no, I'm not doing that, no way. And sure, sometimes that's the case. Sometimes we're cognizant of our fear and decline to move forward. But I wonder how often our neglect or refusal is softer, more subtle. I wonder how much of our regret comes from simply not stopping and looking around,

not letting in alternative points of view that challenge us and force us to level up. How much of our regret comes from simply not understanding how short life is and how quickly time passes us by. And if we don't create some abrupt change in our day to day, if we don't manufacture some momentum in our lives, even when it feels least ideal to do so, the ship we needed to be on will sail away without us. So think back to your hardest days.

Even the ones that took you out, that brought you to your knees, and realize that you survived every single one of them. You have, for years, been acquiring the armor, piece by piece, to move into something bigger. You've been learning. You've been evolving. But today, what about sitting down with yourself and having the discussion you don't want to have, but need to have?

What about asking if it's time to leap where you once step? To run where you once walked? What about taking a good look around and asking why you're living in ways that don't serve you? Why you're conceding so much of what matters? Again, the evolution you want and need is there. It's always there, and that's the key takeaway here. It will always exist. But the question is, will your commitment to stop, to think, and to reach for it be there?

Years from now, looking back, I think we'll find that our willingness to ask those questions mattered more than we could have ever imagined. That silence often implies the lack of adversity needed to evolve. Because the reality you want, it doesn't come to you. you must go to it. And that means re-approaching today's normalcy and comfort, seeing those things for what they are, a continuation of the status quo. Nothing changes until you change.

So take a look around, examine those pillars holding up your worldview. Not once, but over and over again. And if one, many, or all of them must be knocked down, then so be it. The point here is that you can build. The point here is that life happens on your terms, whether you realize it or not. That doing nothing is accepting what things are. It's a head nod and a thumbs up to reality as is. So again, ask yourself what you want out of life.

And if you are missing that mark, tear down what must be torn down. It might be hard now. It might hurt now. It might be uncomfortable now. But when you're eventually standing upon an existence that aligns with who you are and what you want, you'll see how necessary it all was. How it was there the whole time. And thank God you found it within yourself to reach out and take it.

he came across a video and I'm going to paraphrase a lot of it so it's not an exact quote but hopefully you'll get the gist from this story it's essentially Shaquille O'Neal talking to his son and you know it's not a story about you know dunking and championships or highlight reels he was talking to his son about sacrifice and his son basically says you know Dad, I want to play in the NBA like you and Shaq's looking at him and saying, then you need to understand what that means, right? Very stern, very almost concerned demeanor, which pulls you right into the video. It was pretty powerful.

You know, he's kind of going through their past. And he says, do you understand what that means? If you want this dream, I need you to understand what it means. And he goes on. And again, I really want to emphasize that I'm paraphrasing the idea. But he's essentially saying, if you want this dream, you'll miss birthdays. You'll miss family dinners. You'll miss time with friends.

You won't have that balanced, carefree life that most people enjoy. Goes back even deeper. How many birthdays did I miss? His son thinks for a second, you know, a lot, right? How many plays did I miss? How many games? Right? You can see the sort of dots connecting in his.

son's head, you know. That's the cost of being great at something. That's the price I had to pay. Because the reality is, in I believe what Shack is getting at is every dream has a toll booth, every aspiration has a cost. And the question isn't whether you'll pay, it's whether the life on the other side is worth the price. And it's a question you have to ask yourself.

And when you decide that it is, you go all in with every single thing you have. But first, you make sure that it is indeed something that matters to you. And there was a comment under the video that I found almost as intriguing as the video. It really makes you think, right? The comment was, you can have it all. Just not all at once. Because today, in Shaq mentions this in the back and forth, He says, today, you know, because of that work I put in, now I can help you.

Now I have money to help my family be great. I have these things. But the cost, when you were younger, was missing a lot. Right? There were a certain chapter, certain seasons. Now he has the resources, and now he has the time. But at the beginning, when he was climbing, he didn't. He had to choose.

He had to trade comfort for greatness. moments now for a legacy later. And that's not just his story. That's all of our stories. Life is tradeoffs, and I can't emphasize this enough. It's like you want to build a business, okay, you're going to have to sacrifice nights out. You want to run a marathon.

Okay, you're going to have to sacrifice sleeping in, right, to get those. miles in before work. You want to write that book, create the art, step into the new identity. You're going to have to sacrifice approval. Sacrifice certainty. You're going to have to sacrifice ease.

Because dreams demand payment in advance. And it's not easy. Sometimes it even feels unfair. Sometimes it's like the universe is asking too much. But ask yourself, isn't that the point? Isn't greatness supposed to require something of us? Wouldn't it mean less if it didn't? You can have it all, just not at once.

That line isn't about limitation. I think it's about sequence. It's about patience. About trusting that if you build the foundation today, the house will stand upon it tomorrow. Jack missed birthdays. so that essentially he could provide for birthdays. He missed plays so that he could set the stage for his family's future.

He missed games so his kids would never have to miss opportunities, trade-offs, sacrifices, choices. That's the name of the game. And if you're in a season right now where it feels like you're missing out, remember, you're not losing, you are investing. You're exchanging now, changing now for later. You're planting seeds that will grow into trees, forests.

So when you're tired, and if you're not right this moment, there will be a time when you are. When you're tempted to quit, if you think that thought will never, even for a moment, enter your head and bounce around, my friend, you are wrong. When you see everyone else laughing and playing

and seemingly living these perfect lives, while you're working. I need you to remember the truth that was echoed from a father to his son and now to you. That line that by chance I stumbled upon, you can have it all, just not all at once.

So in this season of life, choose your all. Choose your sacrifice. Choose the thing you're willing to miss so that one day you can stand where few ever stood. And when someone asks, was it worth it? You'll be able to look back at the life you built, the people you've helped,

the legacy you left, and answer without hesitation. Yes, it was worth every trade-off, every difficult decision, all the sacrifice, the temporary pain, the suffering. It all helped you design the life you wanted to live with intention. with purpose, with passion, it all brought you here. And what a beautiful thing. You can have it all. Just not all. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.

This was written by the author of Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Conneman. And what he's referring to is a cognitive bias known as the focusing illusion. Pretty basic idea means that we elevate the importance of things that we think about while ignoring other aspects of our lives. By thinking about something, it suddenly matters more to us. And while it's easy to interpret this disconnect between our thoughts and reality is alarming,

there's also an opportunity here to use this to our advantage, right? To further become the captain of your ship. I've heard my entire life. Think positive thoughts. We all have. But there's value in understanding why that's true, right? Otherwise, it just feels like a meaningless ritual. So Connman talks about a study with college students where they were asked about their overall level of happiness, and then they were asked about their dating lives. And the answers they gave, there were really, you know, there was no correlation between the two answers. But when the order of the questions were switched, when the students were asked about their dating lives first, and then their overall happiness,

the correlation between the two answers increased. The answer they gave about their overall happiness mirrored however they said their dating lives were, at least to a much greater extent. Why? Well, because dating became the variable or the framework that they used to measure their overall happiness, even though perhaps they didn't know it, right?

But by focusing on it, it became more relevant. It bled into other aspects of life, right? You get what you focus on. It's that simple. And the truth is, as I mentioned earlier, nothing is as important as we think it is. Everything is magnified, kind of blown out of proportion in our minds.

So the question is, why not use that as an advantage? Why not let that become our strength? Realizing that if simply thinking about something can change the trajectory of how we view the world, it can be transformative to simply minimize the bad thoughts and focus on good ones. Have you ever thought about how delicate the line we walk between not caring enough and caring too much? For example, to feel like existence is pointless, right? Everything's bad, there's no reason to try. That makes it hard to get off the couch, like, lacking that purpose.

But then, on the entire other end of the spectrum, to feel like life is riding on every step, to feel like we're not allowed the flexibility or leeway to make mistakes. Life matters too much. That also severely limits how we live, just in a different way. And so I want to explore how do we find that middle ground? How do we find that picture in our heads that puts us right where we need to be? The idea that, of course, today is important.

Life is a beautiful opportunity to extract meaning from the world around you, to build something that matters. But it's also no checklist. It's no standardized test. No, it's more of a game. We shouldn't be walking around with the weight of the world on our shoulders because that doesn't help anyone. Let's face it, life is just not all that serious. As a good friend of mine, Steve always says to me, you know, we are sacks of meat on a rock floating through an infinite, ever-experienced.

universe and nothing matters. I've heard him say that a million times, right? Let's go, let's do it. Nothing matters. Let's make it happen. And I'm 100% get it. It's a check against the idea that the world will collapse if we screw up. That if we drop the ball, it's over. Kind of pointing to the fact that the only way to truly lose in life is to look back and realize we were too scared to live. that context, absolutely I'm on the nothing matters bandwagon. But here's the deal about this

video or podcast episode, however you're consuming it. In a perfect world, it's a buffet, not a menu. It's an opportunity for you to think, to reflect, to pick and choose the pieces here that will help move you along. Because after all, you know, we're all walking different paths. So how could one person present a one-size-fits-all solution to anything? No, the goal is to understand the framework by which we operate. To understand that the thoughts we think have a monumental impact on how we live. And so if you find yourself on the uninspired side of things, know that there's not a problem with you.

You just haven't found a path that lights you up. You are perhaps focusing on the wrong things, right? Not leaving space for the right ones. And if you find yourself constantly smothered by the weight of your own expectations, if every little step, decision, or movement matters too much, know that you are perhaps creating adversaries that don't exist. That you are right where you need to be, but you have to let yourself live, experience life.

One of the most beautiful Victor Franco quotes I've ever heard, he says, ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. There is so much power packed into this idea. It's like when you look around and see the outside world backing you into a corner, dictating to you how things should be, remember, that you don't take orders from the external world. You create the external world. When all you see is negative. When all you feel are reasons to turn back, when the good in life is hiding away,

reach out and find the positive. The one thing that can pick you up and carry you forward. And look, I'm not advocating that we live, in this state of delusion. I'm not saying close your eyes, cover your ears and pretend everything's great. I'm saying every day, every situation provides at least one thing you need to be closer to where you want to be. And it just so happens that we're not always inclined to see that one thing, that solution. It just so happens that we need to become aware to remind ourselves. So this is your reminder to look for it. Your reminder to focus on the things that lift you up, that breathe life

into you, not the things that keep you down. And so here's to finding that sweet spot, right? Walking the line between Victor Frankel's meaning starts with you. And my old pal Steve's mantra, nothing matters, so go live your life. This is not a race. If you're not being graded on the outcome here, you're giving yourself permission to experience that jolt you get when you open your eyes as the sun comes up each morning, knowing that how you're about to spend your time

will be a product of the game you designed. A game in which, yes, you'll feel lost from time to time. You'll lose that North Star every so often. You'll question the journey you're on. But guess what? When you take responsibility for the circumstance, you also empower yourself to right the ship. You're at the wheel playing the game of life

as it was meant to be played on your terms. If it does not serve you, let it go. if it doesn't help you move beyond it. As Connemann states, our thoughts grossly over-exaggerate that reality on the ground. So let that framework emphasize your passion, your strength and your dreams, not the inverse. What we focus on, we get. So believe in yourself with such convincing. that those around you look on and wonder what gave you the right to see those things?

What made you think it was okay to believe in that which you believe? You never got a permission slip in the mail? You never stumbled upon a permit that granted you access to the good things in life. No, you just came to understand the game and how it's playing. You came to see that we have options. The option to find the bad and the option to find the good. The choice to see why you can't and the choice to see why you will. That's what will separate you from both your past self and those looking on from afar.

See, change is never a product of magic as people seem to think. No, most often, it's taking on the challenge. of seeing what is not yet there. Stepping into the arena with possibility, with the upside. So today, see it. Focus on it, lock it in, and don't let go. With everything you have, all that's within you, don't let go. For everything tomorrow can be, for everything you have always been,

Don't let go