Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - When All Hope Is Lost | Motivational Speech

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

"A single thread of hope is still a very powerful thing" - unknown

Hope. That bridge that connects the present to a more ideal world. The idea that no obstacle is too big to overcome, no situation too dire, to emerge victorious, and that you are never confined to how things are. FDR has said, we have always held to hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world beyond the horizon. Why does this matter? Well, to put it simply, before one can leave this situation they are in,

they have to believe there is another path worth taking. It's not always seeing, but trusting. It's a tale of two components. One, the belief that something better is out there. and two, the belief that you are strong enough to bridge that gap to create that world. So let's start with number one. There was a study done by Kurt Richter in the 1950s, and he used rats. And it was kind of a gruesome experiment, but definitely worth talking about because the takeaway is incredible.

Right? And I kind of cherry-picked the relevant parts of the experiment. Basically, he wanted to delve into the role. that hope plays in our lives. And what he would do is he would drop rats into a jar of water and observe. See how long they would swim before they drown. And for the most part, these rats would swim for a minute or two and then ultimately give up.

There was this innate feeling of hopelessness. But then he made a change and when they were close to drowning, he'd reach in, he'd pick them up, he'd hold them for a little while. And then he'd place them back in the water. The results between the two groups were night and day. The rats saw in the second group that it wasn't over. When they were placed back in the water, they had a reason to continue swimming, and they did. Some of them did for hours.

The only difference being that they had hope. They saw there was more. And I don't think that's too different from us. The situation may be different, but the rules generally apply. Right? So much of conceding or giving up in life, accepting an existence that falls short of our ideals, is when we don't believe in something more. We stop swimming. You don't give ourselves a chance. Right? So instead of creating bridges to walk on, we make walls that lock us in. Hope is knowing all pain, all discomfort is temporary. And the second component is belief

in yourself, belief in yourself to traverse that space between current and the ideal. It's self-empowerment. You can be the difference maker in your life and others. And it's funny, the other day after reading about the Richter experiment, I was sitting in a friend's house with my laptop, kind of trying to figure out what to make of it, because the idea of hope I knew was powerful. And then I wanted to share that story. I wanted to write something that would highlight its value, but it seemed kind of unmasked.

or simply part of an explanation. I'm sitting there thinking about it. And I hear this loud bang over and over again. And I get up and I run to the back of the house, right, to make sure everything's fine, see what's going on. And my friend's standing there with goggles on, this grin on his face and a sledgehammer and a huge hole in the wall in front of him. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing?

You just knocked your wall down. He goes, yeah, I wanted to make another closet. His family's growing. He needs more space, and he just took it upon himself to make that happen. I just looked at him and walked back out. He started walking to the living room, and it hit me. This is a component of hope. Seeing what's not there and doing something about it.

If the swimming experiment is step one, this has to be step two. In real time. Step one, believing, seeing something more. Step two, taking action to change it now, buying into the fact that you have the power to change your own world. And it's funny because any house or room I've ever lived in, my thoughts always, you know, you look around and this is it, right? This is the situation, this is what's being given to me.

How do I make the most of it? How do I play within these parameters? Not, okay, this is fine, but it could be better, you know, by smashing down the wall in the back over there, creating something new. And, you know, obviously the message here isn't about home maintenance. This is about taking a sledgehammer to the places in your life in which you are not content so that you can build in its place something that matters. You look around to your left, you're right, and you're unhappy.

That's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story. That's where the wheels hit the road. In other words, it's looking at life. With the lens, with the freedom of knowing things don't have to be what they are. They don't have to stay the same until the universe changes them. No, they can be what you make them. And what life teaches us again and again is that walls can be stepped over.

Nose can become yeses. Impossibles can become commonplace. But first, there must be... Hope. There must be an understanding that your world is a 10,000 foot view of all the little stories you tell yourself and the narratives you believe. See, every day when you wake up and take your first steps, breathe your first breaths, know that nothing simply is. No, it is simply chosen and can be re-made. That's what makes life such a beautiful thing. It's flexibility. It's promise to provide what has been relentlessly sought out. So remember, it's when you can't find your answer.

When the odds look grim, when the rest of the world tells you know that you most need hope. Hope, the power, the strength to look within yourself and remember that one life can change and two, you can change it. Armed with this understanding, nothing is impossible. When others fail to see the answer, the light in themselves, and the situation, you become the reminder that light is internally manufactured. We aren't given answers so that we may believe them.

We are given the opportunity to believe and thus we create that ending we hope to pursue. And without this, life is nothing more than a permanent status. It's holding our hands to the sky and receiving what light chooses to provide. But that's not why you're here. It's not why you woke up today, not to accept, but to create. To find hope in the tragedy and the hardship and to find within yourself the strength to move forward with whatever you decide comes next.