Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Unleash Your Inner Champion: The Ultimate Guide to Self-Confidence with Eddie Pinero

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

"Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing to be wrong." - Peter T. McIntyre Monday Motivation Newsletter: https://www.eddiepinero.com/newsletter Free Ebook: www.eddiepinero.com/ebook  YouTube: www.eddiepinero.com/youtube In this episode, Eddie delves into the transformative journey of self-confidence, success, mindset and believing in your worth. Join for invaluable insights on taking consistent steps towards your goals and unlocking your full potential in both business and life. Get ready to be inspired and empowered to chase your dreams with confidence and determination!

There is one person who can save you. And that person exists in the mirror. I was recently doing an audit of some of the most important conversations I've ever had. Mentors, friends, coaches, people that have changed my life, people that I love and am beyond grateful for. And started kind of going one by one. What did I learn from this person? What was it that I took away from them? And, you know, in one way or another, across the board, the answer was the same.

It was some variation of confidence. It was belief that I could step into that next chapter, that I have what it takes, that the unknown wasn't impenetrable. In fact, you know, the unknown is inviting. And truthfully, I don't know how many people started from the same starting point that I did, where I essentially had to learn every step of the way that I was good enough, had to read, teach myself that I belonged where I was, that the room that I was in, there was a reason I was there, that the circle I was in, that I earned a right

to be in that circle. They say confidence is earned, and I had to continuously earn it. And I value that progression, truly, for a few reasons. One, because I've been on the other side, and when I see other people making that assent, I do everything I can to make them feel welcome and comfortable. Right.

But the second thing is I understand at a deep level how much of success is simply believing you are worthy of it. You know, I look at the things that I do now and it's like so much of it's just because I allowed myself to do it. At some point, I looked around and said, you are worthy of this. Believe it. Step into it. There's nothing stopping you but you. And I've seen the power of as someone. near and dear to me once said walking into a room like God sent you.

It's not a fake it till you make it game. It's believing in your heart that you are worthy game. No one who's achieved success on a consistent basis got there accidentally. At some point they looked at that reflection and said, hey, this is me. At some point they looked around and said there is no difference between me and the people, who have done great things. Those people just gave themselves the green light and chose to stay consistent.

I can do that. You can do that. Everybody can do that. Will you? That's the question. No one can save you because no one can make you believe. No one, when your eyes open in the morning, can position your mindset to say,

today is mine. The world is my opportunity. No one can convince you that you're capable of magic on your short time on this planet. That's an internal decision. Do you believe you are worthy of it? And if not, let's get you to that point. That's the name of the game. Look hard at that reflection and remind yourself that you have everything you need to begin.

Not a few things or some things. everything you need. You're good enough. What's required is you giving yourself permission to go on whatever journey you deem important. It's allowing yourself to tap into the strength that's already there. Be resilient. Ship away, little by little, every day. That's it.

That's the formula. You approach that lane with tenacity and drive. And life changes, right? As the saying goes, days turn into months, which turn into years. And you'll look back and, you know, if you'll see, You'll see you're not the same person you once were. You'll see that you had this potential all along. You just had to give it life.

See, we attribute complexity to things we don't understand. We assume people on mountaintops were placed there, that they had God-like abilities. And it's like, no, they just believed they were worthy and stepped forward into the night. Just like a seed must be planted, you too must give your potential the opportunity to be nourished by what's around you. When the alarm clock goes off, your eyes open, and your feet touch the ground in the morning,

remember that getting what you want is far less complex than you think. It's simple. Not easy, but it's simple. You say yes to more and start walking down the road. And you'll change, you'll adjust, you'll evolve. There will be times when you backtrack. course correct and perhaps even switch lanes altogether. But the gift of going is the best gift you'll have ever presented to yourself. No one is coming to save you. And when you realize how powerful you

are, you will have not wanted it any other way. When it comes to the almost 8 billion people on planet Earth, there's undoubtedly a variance in the resources at our disposal, the influence we have, What we all share is the ability to rule over our own lives, our own thoughts. As Thoreau said, think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you. See, life moves quickly. And if one is unable to slow it down to examine the world around them, well, they'll find themselves a cog in the wheel of their own existence, a pawn on the chessboard of life. life. Because reality is a battle. A battle of self-interest that requires that we build walls

around that which is precious, that we protected it all cause. Your worldview is the foundation for everything of value in your life, yet it's constantly under attack. Attack from the negativity at the gate, the suffering attempting to breach the walls, the outside, is praying that you'll outsource your thinking, that you'll let them rule from afar. To maintain control over your own outlook, it's no small feat. It's perhaps the most important battle of your life.

It's the difference between intentionality and chance, the role of the ruler or the ruled. As the saying goes, if you don't build your dream, you will spend your days building someone else, someone else's. If you don't ask yourself what you want in life, those needs will ultimately be buried under nonsensical obligation that takes their place. Where there are vacuums in awareness that you will be filled,

usually not by actors with the same interests as you. See, mistakes are not the problem. No mistakes mean you're present, driving towards something, collecting data for this experiment that is like, It's autopilot that destroys. Like that frog put in a pot heating up so slowly it never knows to jump out. The external world becomes its demise. And this message isn't to instill fear or intimidate.

It's to remind you to ask the question that so few ask. How is my life best lived and what can I do to bring that to reality? If you can think for yourself, you're never out of the fight. If you can think for yourself, you're always a decision away from advancement in the direction of that which matters most. So trust you to do what's right for you. In a world where no one knows what they're doing, I can assure you you don't need external endorsements or stamps of approval.

Take Robert Frost, road less traveled by, and don't. Don't look back, don't feel remorse. That's where you're forced to find yourself, to ask the tough questions to embrace who you are. Because the crowd is antithetical to rationality. Not just because responsibility dissipates. Not just because human beings become essentially well-dressed chimpanzees, but because rarely on the micro level is the collective goal, your goal.

Have the courage to see that. Have the courage to understand that life is not an instruction manual. Everything around you you have in one way or another accepted. And in accepting it, you have chosen it. By not saying no, you have in fact said yes. So realize that the world around you doesn't change until your thoughts become the bridge that connects current to future, today to tomorrow. Until you realize life can't make you a victim or a pawn on its chestboard without your promotion. mission, whether implicitly or explicitly.

No, you have the ability to think, control, orchestrate something greater than what's in front of you. Let today be your next courageous step in the direction of that reality. There's a quote attributed to Seneca that states no man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity, for he is not permitted to prove himself. Meaning it's in pursuing the difficult thing that we obtain meaning, recognition that we prove ourselves. But prove ourselves to whom? This is the same Seneca who famously stated that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, that he is most powerful who has power over himself.

And that's one of the beautiful things about stoicism. It makes us ask a very simple that often overlooked question, who's really the adversary here? Who's the opposition we're dealing with as we fight our battles? What is it that must be transformed? Is it the outside world? Or the way our eyes view the outside world? What's really holding us back? the circumstances or our own personal thoughts about the circumstances.

And I think this is where we misunderstand the challenges before us. I want to delve into this power of perspective to explain that we are the gatekeepers between ourselves and our ideal lives. And very often we do a good job of ensuring that gate stays closed. We sabotage our own goals, our own dreams, our own happiness, while simultaneously pointing the finger at a million externalities. See, when we look at the difficulties of life, and there's no doubt that life can be a very difficult thing,

it's easy to look at the world as this binary playing field, me versus the world. And in fact, we often visualize the world as the enemy, pushing back against us as if its motives were counter to ours. So many of these narratives, these stories, they actually say nothing about the outside world. I mean, we look deeper. It becomes apparent that they actually say a whole lot more about us. It's the one viewing that gets to decipher what the circumstance means.

And so all narratives are reflection. of the observers. Jim Rohn used to tell a story about two brothers who had an alcoholic father. He'd come home drunk, he'd abuse his sons. They had a terrible childhood. And as they each grew up and had families of their own, their paths kind of diverged.

One became abusive, and the other was kind and loving and caring. And when confronted the now abusive brother, stated, well, look, how can you blame me? Don't you see how I was raised? But the kind, loving and caring brother stated, of course I'm like this. I could never put my family through what I went through as a child. Same circumstances, different lenses, interpretations, which means different real world result. And the idea here is to emphasize how one of the most important abilities a human being possesses is the ability to interpret the world around him.

I think of us as subjects navigating a world of objects, as though the things around us don't have meaning until we place meaning upon them. That's what humans do. Create narratives out of objects. Seemingly insignificant ability places a lot of power in our hands. Very rarely is it what we see, it's what we think and what we do about what we see. You ever hang out with people that just tend to be happy, upbeat, positive energy? I have a very good friend like that where his first inclination is always to find the positive. moments where I've sort of trained myself to pause, take a second, sift through the emotion, uncover the value in a tough situation, refocus, and take a strategic step forward, I look over

at him and he's already arrived there, right? He's been there for three minutes, right? Eliminated the negativity, it's his first instinct. He's the metaphorical kid hopping around in puddles, whistling at the top of his lungs, while everyone else is hiding out from the rain, or at least trying to find the courage to run out onto the street with. Then there are people who seem to always find the negative. It doesn't really matter what this situation is. Happiness is fleeting, only to reveal the negativity that never seems to go away, right? The kind of person that if they won the lottery, their first thought might be, oh no, but what if I lose it all? Both examples are people projecting themselves onto the world around them. The same way that smoke covers and consumes an

entire room. It's not the room that's the culprit. Here's another example from Jim Rohn, since we're on a Jim Rone kick. He's making a similar point, and this is all from a collection of speeches. He has on Audible, comparing humans to oranges, which is probably not a comparison you've made recently, but he said there's consistency to an orange and that it can be filled with one thing. When you squeeze an orange, orange juice is coming out. Period. It will never be apple juice or grape food juice.

It will only emit what it has inside, which is orange juice. And while here's the connection, when life pressures us, challenges us, or metaphorically squeezes us, we only emit the emotions that are contained and available, that are alive and well within us. If there is no jealousy contained in our thinking, we're not going to project jealousy out into the world. If there is no hatred within us, we will not project hatred onto others. Why is that powerful? It's powerful.

Because, again, it's one of the most important things you can do. Certainly one of the most important things I've learned to do is take that finger pointing blame at the outside world. slowly turn it around and point it back at myself and ask what thoughts what emotions what ideas am i letting live inside my head that's altering the narrative the story i'm telling about myself and the world that i live in and while one might think well that's uncomfortable that's unfair a little extreme why should i point at myself it's not my fault i would challenge you At least for the sake of the next few minutes, to see such a change as empowering, as your advantage. As the bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

See, if you always have feelings of, let's say, jealousy around a particular person, that feeling in your stomach like, oh, they have it all. They're ahead. They live how I want to live. They're this and that, and I kind of hate them for it. You're naively giving the external world the power. you're saying I feel the way I do because of that out there, some cosmic injustice. You are powerless because you're neglecting your personal agency as a factor.

But when you turn that finger around and say, I only feel this way because I'm allowing myself to, then you can ask the question. So many never think to ask. Why? Why do I feel this way? Which lights a path to how can I fix it? See, the key to a better life is realizing you don't have to be in the passenger seat pointing at and blaming the driver complaining about the road being taken.

No, you can get into the driver's seat. You can take the wheel. You can take control. Inherit responsibility. And there's more at stake, there's greater vulnerability. But the upside is unfathomable. And I find myself thinking all the time, man, people are blaming the wrong things. They're shifting blame to the wrong adversaries.

The real villain here is not the driver or the road or the weather. The real villain is the voice in your head pleading with you not to tell. take the wheel, pleading with you to ride shotgun and complain as the world passes you by. And of course it makes sense to qualify that, with the inevitability that there are some things placed upon us that are just bigger than us, that we can't control. And you can make a list however long you want to, natural disasters, decisions and actions of others, health problems. We don't often get to choose the landscape. So as the Stoics would say, understand that. Understand what you can't control and what you can. Because the beauty is that you

can control how you navigate that landscape and that is power. That is what makes the difference. See the two brothers I mentioned a few moments earlier, same landscape. Different navigational tactics. different view of what it all meant. One took the wheel and one did not. So that's Seneca quote. That states, no man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself. Well, it's perfectly clear as far as I'm concerned. The question is not whether or not to face adversity. I think we all understand that. What I hope we take from today is a better understanding of what the true adversity is. A better understanding of the fact that in front of us there is always an answer, a key to every lock.

Some people just don't think to look. They're so busy peering around every corner for external enemies and scapegoats that they don't give themselves permission to succeed. Maybe unfortunate, but it's true. You can hit the bull's eye over and over again. But if it's the wrong target, it won't do much for you. You might as well have missed by 50 feet. And I think that is what we overlook. You can't always fix the outside world.

You can't change the unchangeable, but you can always change yourself. You can always fix you. Is Tolstoy said, everyone wants to change the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. You're capable of being both your greatest adversary and ally. So choose wisely. Because the world around you will do nothing more than respond accordingly to your decision. It's always fascinated me that we spend so much of our lives searching for the things that we realize in time we had all along.

that our journeys bring us full circle. Our stories end how they began, and in the end, we fade away holding tightly to that from which we emerged. Not because we fell short, no, but because eventually we realize how simple things really are from the outside looking in. We realize what we have. Speaker Dennis Waitley once said happiness cannot be traveled to.

Owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. That's why times like these, when we get to look around and recapture our perspective, means so much. Almost as though it's reassurance that, yeah, life can be hard, frustrating, abstract, but that the core of everything is contentment is enough. It's why we need not search for love we are in fact surrounded by. We need not search for hope when it's ingrained in every breath or reassurance when it's a phone call away.

I once heard an interesting idea that we only see what we focus on, and not only metaphorically, Literally, so much of life exists outside our periphery. If you can walk down the same street every day and see something new each time, imagine the power of readjusting how you see life as the sun comes up in the morning. Imagine pulling more of what matters into focus, becoming living proof that we don't need to wait until things are gone or changed to appreciate what we have and who we are. I think that's why Cicero said gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

Because when one can look around and see all that they have, scarcity has to give way to abundance. Fear becomes hope, the mundane becomes beautiful. Gratitude is power because it's not acquisition. It's awareness. A reset button. A tap on the shoulder reminding us that life is about the people who make it. worth living, the times we spend together. It's a reminder that the minutes aren't ticking towards some life altering grand finale,

but that each second is in and of itself a miracle. And of course I'm a believer that we are here to evolve, to grow, to test the waters, to push our limits. But I'm also a believer in asking why. And it seems to me the answer is not to obtain something new, but to share who we we are with the world, not to get what we don't have, but to make the most of what we do. Not to impress or fit in, but to take that passion that increases our heart rate, that curiosity, that pulses towards new horizons, the incredible friends and family by our side, and simply

realize that we are, this very moment, embarked upon the adventure of a lifetime. And for that, I am forever grateful.