Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - This Speech Will Remind You Who You Are | The Hardest Thing | Motivational Speech

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Trust that the path you're on will get you where you need to be. It will require patience. It will call for adjustment. It will even humble you from time to time. But ultimately, it will get you there.

It was an ordinary day. Those, more often than not, are the ones worth commenting on for it's in the ordinary that so much is decided. So I got out of bed a little later than usual. That extra spring in my step has been elusive lately. You know, sometimes we go through those periods where it just becomes challenging to get excited about everyday things. We forget why we're on the path we're on. or as the distinction goes, the fleeting passion has dissipated. And what we're left with, hopefully, is purpose.

Purpose is what pulls us through the low point. Purpose is what we latch on to when things aren't exciting or we've fallen down. We look up and say, ah, that's the reason I'm here. That's the reason I will endure. And when we lose that, we're due for rediscovery. of some sort, finding it again becomes of the utmost importance. If you think of one single star, alone in the night sky, sure, it's beautiful in its own right. But it also feels like it's missing part of what makes it so spectacular.

The collective. Just like one small step forward or one win or overcoming one obstacle, getting through one day is great. But it doesn't become magnificent until you look at it in the context of the whole, the bigger picture. And if you can't see the bigger picture, you lose the power of all those little pieces that bring it to life. Meaning brings magic to the mundane. Sometimes I like to think of a character collecting those stars. Putting them into a bag, he's carrying over. He's carrying over his shoulder, picking them up and dropping them in one by one, moving around the night, and collecting those little glowing stories that will ultimately come to mean everything.

Eventually, he turns his bag upside down and the stars fall out. And you get this jaw-dropping, spiraling sea of light, Milky Way. You remember now why each little star matter. Do you think back and go, ah, that makes sense? Difficult to see in the moment. And I think it's this recollection during the trivialities of life that is the hardest thing.

It's not that the world is collapsing around us. No, that would actually give us something tangible to address. It's that the stars sometimes are few and far between. The night feels more prominent than the sea of light that will someday materialize. The hardest thing is not right now. I wrote down recently a list of all the things that were bothering me, right? The things that I wanted to address.

I made a list on the left side of the page, and then to the right of each item, I made a little box. A space to write essentially what I'm doing about it. So, for example, of injury is on the list. Well, on the box to the right, I'd put physical therapy, right, to show myself I'm making progress. Or if something business-related is on the list, On the corresponding box to the right, I'd put maybe hired a business coach or creating new services, etc.

They don't need to be solutions per se. In fact, most won't, but they show me that I'm at least not accepting the areas in my life that I find insufficient. These are tangible obstacles, and they, with direction and persistence, can be overcome. That's saying an elephant is eaten one bite at a time. And this notebook, it made me feel better, right? Like, this is mine. I get to control how I feel and what I do about it. But again, this is relieving a symptom, not the root cause,

because the true elephant in the room, as far as I'm concerned, is finding a way to hold on to the meaning that this list represents. It's believing that all these things pave away to something powerful, and that is the hardest thing, holding on to purpose as it elevates. like some kind of hot air balloon drifting towards the horizon, and I'm not letting go of that basket. An endeavor that requires faith.

And faith is a word that means many things to many different people, as it should. But the bottom line is, it requires you believe what you're doing right now will make tomorrow better than today. If you don't believe you're worthy of a masterpiece, if you don't believe to live is the most incredible of gifts, and your job is to arrange the pieces that reiterate that in a way that's significant to you, then you have to remind yourself what those stars become when the bag is tipped upside down.

You have to remember the subtlety of the journey. And I think that's what I forgot. It had been too long since I stepped outside of the mundane, since I saw a sunrise or sunset, since I looked at the divinity of a universe so much bigger than me. A container for my little steps, my victories and my obstacles. That list of problems and solutions, it was helpful in the moment. What I needed at the time, it provided clarity. But ultimately it was one plank or board in the house being built.

See, when the trivial things become the only things, we need to remind ourselves we probably aren't looking at the right things. And maintaining that perspective can be the hardest thing. But if we can find it within ourselves and remember that we'll have losses and we'll have wins and we'll have days where we're unsure and confused and doubtful in days where we're certain and positive things are going the way we want them to go, It all comes together to be bigger than the sum of its parts. It means something more. And when we look back down the road, we'll see that everything brought us where we needed to be.

That it all mattered. And that trusting ourselves, having faith in the process, was the answer. So when it happens again and it will, my solution is going to be simple. both appreciate the mundane and seek out the spectacular. A song or beautiful scenery or good times with the ones I love. Something to remind me that the things that often trip me up or throw me for a loop are stepping stones. It's possible that my bag full of stars isn't ready to be turned upside down. Maybe there's still a lot of collecting to do, work to be done.

But its evidence is all around us, in the magnificence of the outside world, the opportunity awaiting our eyes opening every morning. We don't have to do anything, but we get to do whatever sets our souls on fire, and that is the incredible distinction. So here's to letting the hardest thing light our path. One step, one day at a time.