Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - WHEN IT HURTS | Powerful Motivational Speeches Compilation

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Sometimes success is simply hanging on when others would be letting go...

I was running over the weekend, middle of the day, right under that smoldering South Florida sun. I was doing about a 3.7 mile stretch, which is one of six or seven legs I was doing for the ultra marathon that day, against the clock, fighting the heat, you know, starting to really suffer, which is the perfect environment for the thoughts that we don't want to let it. It's where we engineer, compromise, create excuses, and I've been running all morning. As I got more and more tired, my mind inevitably started looking for a way out, rationalizing, slowing down. I think everyone's been there, right, in one way or another, and after wrestling with this

for about a mile, came to a realization. I'm doing too much, not physically, but mentally. Building cognitive enemies, creating complexity. See, when you're uncomfortable, when you're in pain, Things become incredibly convoluted. They seem chaotic. Lack of clarity, at least for me, it creates anxiety. But that lightball moment was, you know,

during that leg running to Key West at 12 p.m. with miles to go and questions unanswered and that there's nothing complex about the situation, no mystery to resolve or riddle to figure out. In fact, on paper, this is one of the easiest things I have ever done. Why? Well, because all I have to do, do is not stop. That's it. Do nothing. Keep this pace, one foot in front of the other. That's my only

task. No rabbits out of hats. I don't need to create the unthinkable. No, there in that moment, all I had to do was not stop. And that meant really that the heat didn't matter, that the distance didn't matter, that the world didn't matter. Those are details far too complex for me right now. in that moment, they're way above my pay grade. I'd boiled the objective down into the simplest of tasks. Embarking upon the easiest thing I'd ever done, simply moving forward. And I started thinking about the things that accomplished in my life

that I'm proud of, being knocked down, getting back up, fighting for what I believed in, creating, searching for answers. And now here, I'm really going to entertain the thought that I can't simply move forward. I'm going to be upset that this pace doesn't feel like lying in a bed of feathers? No, I like simple. I love simple. Simple equals clarity, equals progress, equals happiness. Who cares what's around the corner? Because knowing that won't mitigate the next 10 steps I have to take. And eventually that's exactly what I did. I started counting my steps in

groups of 10 because that was really all that mattered. And like all things, you know, before you know what, you look up and the storm has passed. And I got to the end where my teammates waited with water and cold towels. And I got there without abandoning. my one mission, not by an act of heroism, but by thousands of little acts that will remain unseen forever, that will disappear into the universe, I simply carried on a mission that I hold dear. My favorite quote, an old coach of mine used to always remind us, sometimes success is simply hanging on when others are letting go, that's it, that's all, that's everything. because we're so inclined to overlook that simple truth

because we think big results require monumental action. And when you're exhausted, when the miles ahead feel like a huge task, we dig deep for huge solutions. But the answers are not huge, they're minuscule, they're little things that make big things. And when I think back to my youth, my childhood, the times that'd given up or been discouraged,

it was always because I didn't, immediately cross the finish line or hit the home run right away. I didn't get the immediate answer, but I can look back now and just think, if I realized that a walk or a single every day takes you to the moon, that it's not about the miraculous, it's about simply carrying on, which becomes the miraculous. See, we can't let ourselves be lured in by the guise of immediate triumph or false expectations.

No, let's remember that anyone, anyone, can simply move forward. Anyone can take one more step and that's all that's required of you. That's all you can do. Breathe, compose yourself. Take that very next step because if you can do that,

the big picture things, they materialize. You start crossing finish lines. Balls start leaving the park. Little victories accumulate and evolve. Life changes. Do not miss what matters. Don't overlook the simplest of things because that's what,

ultimately carries us home. Comfort and familiarity. In a world where unknown doesn't necessarily mean good or bad. It's an interesting association. Yeah, that possibility of losing what you have is always real. You know, being mortal, being susceptible to misfortune, we want to protect what's ours. But that's where I diverge.

Because what's mine isn't just in my home or garage. It's out there. It's in the universe. It's held captive by what's around every single corner. What's mine is hidden behind tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. See, walking the same path, doing the same things, expecting the same results. Yeah, it's fine, but it's just so limited. If you don't allow yourself to get lost, then you have to be okay knowing that a part of you will never be found.

And that's something I can't live with. Life is so much bigger than your front door. It's more than a yearly review, a commute, a test, a routine. It's the places you've never been, the people you've never met, the dreams that you haven't. sought out, then why is getting lost so important? It's important because you temporarily leave everything you know behind. And for a few short minutes, your subconscious understands that life exists beyond the hamster wheel. One of the greatest truths out there is that you are not confined by anything other than your own mind. So why not free it? Why not step outside the glass cube,

rewrite your story, your narrative, allow yourself to take that left that brings you to an unknown destination. And while, you know, for a while you'll be concerned, you'll worry, you'll think about failure, at the end of the day, you will grow, you will learn, and most importantly, you will find your way home.

And every time you do, that front door feels just a little bit, different. The world around you takes on a slightly new shape. Your front door is no longer an object keeping you in. It's a gateway that opens up for you at your discretion. It connects you to the outside world. It gives you the tools to create the life that you want. Not the life you should have or the one you're supposed to have, but the one you can have. Right. So step outside. Get lost. You owe it to yourself. How can I be happy all the time? It's a question I get probably more than any other,

right? And every time I read that question, you know, I pause for a second and can't help but think, that it's somewhat misguided, happy all the time. How can I eliminate everything? And I guess the thinking is, you know, it's folks that know the channel and watch my videos, right? So they they hear the perspective and the positivity and the messages and you know they want that to be a constant reality and i get that but the part that i think is overlooked is that those breakthroughs right those lessons learned they come from stories that were carved out from hardship right from some of my most difficult times it's not that happy isn't the goal it is but at the macro level It requires micro adjustments, periods of difficulty.

You know, we're human. We have emotions. We have highs, but you bet we have lows and there's good, but there's all so bad. And I don't believe that happy all the time is the target. The targets everything that comes your way, the good and the bad, making something out of it, a net positive, finding happiness in places where perhaps we didn't see it the first time. right thinking big picture thinking macro our overall contentment with life see that's the beautiful component that we're prone to overlook and so i thought for some clarity what i do is start from

you know day one when i started this journey this entrepreneurial um you know process and i'd go through some of my messaging some of the the videos that i've released along the way and talk about why how I got to that point, how I got to that lesson learned, and why maybe happy all the time is misleading. The first video I ever released, it's called Ode to Excellence. And essentially it's about, it's a promise to myself to never quit, to never give up, to never back down, no matter how difficult things get. And I wrote that after my first true entrepreneurial project. I was on my own for the first time and love music. Music's always been sort of the backbone of my creativity.

And I thought, you know what? I'm going to do. I'm going to put everything aside. I'd saved up some money. I'm like, I'm going to record an album, an acoustic album. And that's what I did. And I blocked off the world. And for three months, I wrote songs and recorded them and edited them and mixed them and mastered

them. Put them all on CDs. I sent the CDs to radio stations, clubs, bars all around Boston. I thought it was going to be this life-changing thing. And it was, but not in the way that I thought. The CD got no traction, right? Family, friends bought it were very supportive, but, you know, that's really where it ends. And it was the first time in my life, truly, I'd given everything for something and gotten no response. It was the first time I realized that effort does not always equal a result.

But here's why it was the best thing that ever happened to me. One, I realized that maybe it's not that good. looking back now is what you'd expect doing something for the first time. It's like, dude, you have to hone your craft. You have to write 2,000 songs. You have to put in so much more time to be at a level where you want to be. You can't just think that it happens overnight. And that was a very important thing for me to understand.

The second is I realized that I was at the bottom of a very big mountain looking up. You know, this is a process. And it's going to take persistence. It's going to take patience. And it was stressful, right? Particularly because I didn't have that safety net that I once had, I wanted to retreat back to the simplicity of what I had, the sort of the reassurance of a job.

You know, I wasn't sure that the cost, the uncertainty of the moment was worth it. It was stressful. But that situation helped define me, right? It wasn't perpetual happiness that taught me this lesson. No, it was one of my toughest times. from that failure came my resilience, came my owed to excellence. I wrote a speech called Perspective.

And this is months down the road. I saw my first kind of glimmer of light. I've been doing the music thing and also creating a brand on YouTube and sharing my thoughts, telling stories. And I finally saw a little bit of success. I wrote a speech called Running in the Rain and it was getting traction.

was doing well. It was being shared, creating buzz. I was getting speaking inquiries, all these things. And I'm like, all right, well, here we go, right? Let's go. A little bit of momentum. And I woke up one morning and I got this email from YouTube and it was like, we had to remove the video from your channel because you broke community guidelines. And apparently I put some keywords on the bottom of the description to help it get traffic, running, inspiration, things that would help it sort of move to the top of the pile and some of search for it. And I remember being so angry about the situation. I felt so sorry for myself.

It was like momentum, attention, they're so hard to capture. I'm finally getting it. And now this, right? And my views are declining and everything's going backwards. You can just feel like it was delusional. I felt like the world was ending. But that prompted me to look at the big picture, right? To realize that, look, there's nothing you can do except re-upload the video,

start over and keep my head up. Think about it. life is going to throw things at me that are much more difficult than this. There's going to be difficulty and loss and problem, even tragedy. And if I fold over a video being taken down, I don't really have a shot. So from that tough time, I gain perspective. I learned to toughen up. I started to understand that it's not what happens to you because everyone has difficulty

their life, but it's how you deal with it. That's what brings happiness at a macro level. Wrote a speech called Dancing with No Music. You know, I remember the situation, exactly. I was sitting at my desk, kind of brainstorming a new project I was going to work on, and my phone buzzed. I picked it up, and I had a text message from, you know, a friend at the time, And he accidentally sent a text message to me, kind of poking fun at me and my work and what I was doing.

It was meant to be about me to someone else. And he accidentally sent it to me directly. And I remember sitting there thinking like, dude, are you kidding me? These are the people that are supposed to have your back. They're supposed to be, you know, picking you up, encouraging you when you're, you know, going through these difficult times. And so in that moment, you know, I felt more alone. than I had in a while. It wasn't a great feeling, but it prompted thought.

Thought prompts perspective, and I began to realize, look, it's not his fault. People don't see the world as it can be. They don't understand your vision. They see now, not your idea, not your potential. They see now. And if you want to bring that to fruition, you have to separate the negativity. Separate the people that do that and think like that and say those things and live life like it's already there.

Like it's guaranteed. And so from that difficult moment, I learned that I need to dance with no music. Believe in myself. See it before it's there. Act like I already hear the melody and I'm moving towards. That's the only way to push through that cloud of chaos into the result that you want, that you so desperately want. I wrote a speech called The Last Train Home. At this point, I've been working hard to build your world within for, I don't know, maybe a year at this point.

One of my greatest struggles was that I continued to feel the pressure to adhere to standards that I didn't personally believe in. I was restricted by benchmarks that they weren't integral to my journey. And so before working for myself, it was trying to impress my boss and the idea of promotions and goal sheets. Then it became, you know, comparing my style to those around me, to people that have found success in some capacity. And I even remember, you know, running at 2 p.m. and feeling guilty because all those people doing quote unquote the right thing, they're working in an office. They don't have the luxury of running downtown. And like, that was my mindset. And so I fell into the temptation of viewing precedent or like previous success stories as not just a tool, but as the singular way to reach the summit.

And so I was continually zgging and zagging. You know, here's the, here's the shortcut, or here's the method, here's the strategy. I need to incorporate this and this and this. And every time I diverted from what felt true to me, I stopped. Every time I left my path for someone else's, I became lost in this cloud of confusion. And it took, you know, that reoccurring experience for me to finally understand. You know, it was from those times of disarray that I began to see the significance of patience. That it's okay. It's okay to take my own train.

Even if it's the last one to leave the station, don't panic, don't do something you don't feel is true or right. Believe that your train is there, it's waiting, and you will catch it. That's a very difficult thing to do. It's not a happy experience. But it evolves into this freedom, right? This flexibility and ultimately this satisfaction with life that wouldn't be there if you didn't seek it out. if you weren't patient enough to find it. I wrote a speech called Remember Why You Started.

Hands down, one of the toughest transitions of my life. I was in a situation that on the surface wasn't bad. In fact, you could say it's good. I was surrounded by beautiful people, beautiful relationships, in a good place that I liked. But I was coming to the realization more and more that the situation wasn't conducive to me creating what I felt like I wanted to create. I'd sort of lost track, I'd lost that fire, that energy that I had when I first began.

And that's due to concessions, just small compromises that I was making along the way that add up. And you sort of slowly lose yourself a little bit at a time. And when you make that realization, it's like, well you have a decision to make. You know, are you okay 30, 40 years from now with sacrificing the thing you wanted to build because something else was more important or other things, you know, took priority? And I don't think either one is right or wrong. It's the question that you have to answer. And I made that decision. And I packed up, put my stuff in a trailer, and I left. And I remember as, my world faded away in my rear view thinking like this is the hardest thing I've ever done

I didn't believe for the first 200 miles I was actually going to go through with it I really didn't and eventually you know I arrived at a new place and I made it my home and dedicated myself fully again to what I believed and to what I felt right truly in my heart in doing and I felt that energy that sort of reemerge. And you know, right? You know, you wake up and it just feels good. You have this, this passion that's there that you want every day, that you want to maintain, that you want to drive you. And I knew it was the right decision. But that wasn't born out of happiness. That wasn't born out of the easy thing. It was very, very difficult to get there. It was almost a battle, right? You have to fight to reprioritize. And so this comes up a lot when I hear that question. How can I be happy

all the time? And it's like, well, you know, you can do the easy thing that's easier in the short term, but then will you be happy in the long term? You know, it's sort of a catch-22. It's a prioritization. It's understanding what makes you feel alive. What makes you feel truly good, authentic? And that's not a question of short-term, consistent, non-stop happiness. It's a question of long-term fulfillment. Sometimes we have to do it. do the difficult things to create what we want long term, big picture. And lastly, I'll talk about Ode to Excellence Part 3, which obviously it's been years since part one.

And a lot's changed. The goalposts have shifted. The context is new. But the idea is pretty similar. It's a promise to myself to move into uncharted water, whether that's because it feels right. I'm called to do it or sometimes just for the sake of sheer curiosity. It's that idea that sometimes what awaits around the corner can change your life.

That unknown can be exactly what you need and you don't know unless you move there. And the difference in context is that now I'm settled. Right now I'm substantially more comfortable than I was when this whole thing began for me. And the danger in that is nothing's screaming at you constantly to continue to grow and evolve and develop. Right? It's real easy to fall into routine and just kind of keep going. the way you've always gone. And I remember sitting right outside

talking to a good friend of mine on the phone. And we were talking, you know, strategy, talking about growing our brands and just kind of the different worlds that we're involved in. And he asked, you know, Eddie, why, you know, have you stopped doing the music thing? I think there's something there.

And, you know, music's obviously been a big part of what I do. It kicked off my creative journey, as I mentioned earlier with that album. It's been sort of intertwined into this process. You know, I write a lot of background tunes. I wrote the background music you're listening to right now. I haven't completely left it, but I've pivoted. And when he asked why it's been sort of in the background,

I couldn't give a complete answer. I didn't really know. But as I began to think about it, the answer really rose to the surface. And it became so fixated on one dimension of what I was doing that I started to look at it through a lens of scarcity and ignoring the infinite possibility out there. I mean really in relation to what's possible my accomplishments are a grain of sand on the beach and it's very minimal but that's not how you look at things when you really get lost in the weeds I didn't want to hurt my credibility I didn't want to lose what I built I didn't want to sabotage a

quote unquote winning formula but guess what that's not what life's about that's not what my brand or or messages about, that's not what got me here, right? Exploring creativity is what got me here. It means everything. And that was such an eye-opening thing. It was such a beautiful reminder that, Ed, you're limiting yourself. You're not evolving fully. There's a treasure chest around the corner,

and you're too worried about losing your shiny penny. And it was from this predicament, right, being honest with myself. that that courage and that determination grew. In fact, the struggle ended up exponentially increasing my overall happiness because it re-emphasized the creative flexibility necessary to do what I think is right. The third Ode to Excellence is a promise to keep that flame lit. And see, these are just a handful of little stories. They're little epiphanies.

But I can say wholeheartedly that they shaped me. Not because every day of the journey I was constantly smiling. But it was the specific times that I wasn't that made me stronger. I'm happier now, my life is better now because of these situations. And that's what I want to emphasize, right? Happy all the time isn't the goal, it can't be the goal. Living a life you're proud of and turning the bumps along the way, the inevitable roadblocks along the way into momentum, that's going to give you long-term happiness.

That's going to make you feel better about every moment. It's such a gift to be here. We're so lucky. Let's move away from the idea that there are people out there that never have a bad day. Nothing's ever wrong in their life, because that's not only untrue, but it dilutes the opportunity in front of you. It makes you feel like you're losing when bad things happen, when in fact those are the tools to win, to live every day to the fullest.

Right, the reality is sometimes it is the Hallmark card thing, right? Hands out, sun on your face, smiling, humming your favorite song, life is good. Sometimes it's picking up those little pieces when things feel like they're falling apart around you. But know that regardless, right, either one or anywhere in between, there is positive there. There is power at your feet. Just find it. Hold it and by all means keep moving full.