Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - YOU VS YOU | Powerful Motivational Speeches Compilation

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want the most.” - Abraham Lincoln

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How do successful individuals get where they are? People often look at those who have achieved at a high level as some unique, breed or some kind of rare talent to be marveled over when in reality nothing about their success is predetermined they tirelessly fought and scrapped for what they have you see being great in any capacity starts very very small and then gradually evolves it's derived from the vision that you have of yourself okay having a goal and believing intrinsically with all of your being that you can get it and that you deserve it.

This is what lights the fire to success. It constitutes your beginning. And as you proceed towards these goals, towards these aspirations, you'll find that the biggest challenge you'll ever face will have nothing to do with the people around you. Your struggle won't come from another team, the person you're racing against, or students competing against you in the classroom. your biggest obstacle will always be yourself. You are the reason you succeed and the reason you fail.

It's your individual outlook that determines everything. I mean, think about it. Every morning when you get up, you decide whether to be positive or negative. You can be optimistic or you can be doubtful. You can decide whether to be average or exceptional. Everything's in your hands because no one will ever make anything of value happen. for you, ever. You need to be the one to believe in yourself when no one else does.

And I'll tell you right now, there will be times when it feels impossible to do this, when it would be so much easier to conform to the expectations of others. But having this courage and this strength is what separates good from great, that ability to truly hold yourself to a higher standard, regardless of outside circumstance. You need to know that no matter what stands in the way of your dreams, it can be overcome, even when everyone and everything tells you that it can't. All you have to do is convince the person staring back at you in the mirror, because everything else is minor detail. At night, the sky becomes visible. The darkness, the muting out of everything else allows the stars to finally shine through, to make their presence known.

And during the day, conversely, one cannot see those stars, but the world around him on the ground becomes illuminated. It's a push and pull that seems to work perfectly. And I think there's something poetic about the partnership existing between the big picture goal and the small steps required to bring it to life. As one of my favorite sayings goes, keeping your head in the clouds and your feet.

feet on the ground. Because here's what's interesting. If one were to only look up at the goal, she'd be consistently reminding herself of the ideal without taking the necessary steps to get there. And if one were to only look down at her feet, well, her steps would eventually become aimless. And it's that duality, right? The need to both reassure yourself you can see the stars. as well as use the world around you to pull yourself closer to them that changes things. It's that beautiful dance that has to be maintained. And this is a balancing act that has certainly been challenging. Sometimes the pendulum swings way too far one way, sometimes way too far the other.

But in a perfect world, you know, you want it gravitating towards the center. I remember just starting the YouTube change. almost a decade ago, having, you know, big multi-million subscriber goals, but completely lacking the systems and everyday practices in place that would walk me towards that finish line. I mean, sure, something's better than nothing. I was working and learning, but the actions simply didn't align with the objective. I had to correct them. And then I've been on the other end as well.

But I'd be doing things every day without knowing why. All steps, no goal. That sort of thing occurs when routine takes on a life of its own. You start doing things because, well, it's what I do. It's what I've always done. You know, this is when one has to look in the mirror and ask the difficult questions. And look, anytime I can squeeze the complexities down into the simple, I try and do that. So with that in mind, my questioning goes like this.

What do you want? No, the answer? Okay, good. Next question. Is what you're doing, taking you closer every day to what you want? Asking that question in a serious way takes a spotlight to one's world. Using my previous metaphor, it shuts the lights off so the North Star becomes visible. And then, right, turns them back on to ask yourself if you're using your resources to move there.

And I've become pretty good at asking myself this question consistently. and still I find things that don't belong. That sort of, you know, they hide in plain view. I have faith that I'll end up exactly where I need to be. But that faith is rooted in my commitment to continually assess, to scrutinize, and adjust. There's very little hope and a substantial amount of trust

in my ability to continue forward. There's an idea referred to as the Stockdale Paradox, which states, and this is the first definition I grabbed from Google here, you must never confuse faith that you'll prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. That's where the tough love thing comes in.

be your biggest fan because no one will believe in you unless you do. It all starts with your trust in yourself to navigate the process and arrive where you must arrive. But it also requires you are your biggest critic. It means the reason you trust yourself to get there is because you know you won't just sit back and say, I'll win because I believe I'll win. No, you'll win because you will while having a lot. your head in the clouds, be brutally pragmatic with the steps you're taking on the ground. You'll win because you're committed to learning and adjusting. What of my favorite epiphanies

when I started doing this full time was the realization at a very small scale at first. That, whoa, someone can't fail unless they quit. You can't lose unless you stop. Impossible, someone might think. Well, no. No, because when you miss the mark or you fall short, you take a second to understand why, and then you come back to the problem or challenge again, right? This means life is a game of tenacity, of persistence, of commitment. The one who keeps adjusting and coming back is bound to connect the dots eventually, which makes failure the simple decision that, eh, this isn't worth it for me.

I don't want to continue adjusting and re-engaging with this. And look, hey, depending on the situation, that may be the move, right? There have been things in my life where after sufficient trial and error, sufficient data, I've said, this doesn't align with who I am or what I want. I'm going to walk away and pivot to something that does, right? But the key is knowing that it is a decision. To not reach a particular goal is a choice to no longer attack it relentlessly. And so when you feel lost or defeated or even frustrated with the process,

Try that line of questioning. What do I want? And is what I'm doing today bringing me there? This allows you to start taking a sledgehammer to the things that don't belong, refining the process. And yeah, sometimes walking away from the things that are no longer in the scope of who you want to be and where you're going. But the power is in knowing. It's in understanding that your footsteps, the little actions of your,

You know, your day to day, they are incredibly powerful. But most of all, when you are methodical with them, when they're pointed in the right direction. So pick your stars carefully and own those steps that take you towards them. Failure is not a sickness you catch. It doesn't fall on your head like a piano in those old cartoons. It's a choice. meaning in positive terms as long as you are committed to learn, re-approach, and repeat,

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Restrictions apply. Visit safeway.com for more detail. I recently heard someone say, it's not about doing your best. It's about doing what's required. Are they different? Very. Here's my take. Doing your best has an emotional component attached to it.

It's subjective. What exactly is your best? Well, it's a story that you tell yourself. A narrative, opening the door to limitation. I've always found that when we put our backs against the wall and venture into scenarios where it's essential that we get something done, we somehow always find a way. When we leave no plan B for ourselves,

we are required to make Plan A work. And so we do. It's a testament to both the resilience and power contained in the human spirit, as well as the reality, that we can astound ourselves when we're unwilling to take no for an answer. That it's not the reason.

resources that are the problem. It's usually our unwillingness to move forward into the dark, our hesitance to try, explore, test, build and rebuild. Actions that are surprisingly unrelated to one's best and have everything to do with accepting nothing less than an identified outcome. One of the reasons I fell in love with the sport of running

is because it reinforced this notion in my life. It became the template with which I could repeatedly amaze myself. I talk a lot about earning confidence, and oh, how I earned it. Step by step, mile by mile, day by day, in the sun, in the rain, in the desert, in the woods, through city streets, all over the country and the world. I came to understand the relationship between the turbulence of now and the and the satisfaction of later. It was on those days I'd push beyond my usual level of comfort.

When that cloud of pain and agony would hover over me. I couldn't even really point to where my body hurt. It just all seemed to come together into this one giant hell. And to learn that I could not only endure that, but grow in those moments, To see myself rise above any preconceived notion or understanding of best in order to defeat my demons, conquer the day's objective, it changes the way you see yourself in the world. Now, could onlookers be tempted to call these self-created goals arbitrary, even unnecessary? Sure, and I get why they would, but I'd also completely disagree.

Those days were a master class in doing what is necessary. Realizing that when you shut your rational brain off and don't give your mind a chance to talk your body out of it, you can see just how powerful you are. You realize that story of your best is nothing more than a house built on sand. Life is not about that story you've told yourself. It's not about your personal rational,

and peak performances, what you think you can do or how far you think you might be able to go. It's about not stopping in the moments when it hurts. Doing what is required, a decision that compounds over time to create what was once impossible. One of my favorite quotes is by Admiral William McRaven, an absolute hero of mine. Funny enough, he says, if you want to change the world, the world, you must be your very best in your darkest moments. And what a beautiful idea to rise when life presents its periods of turbulence.

And sure, it may be a matter of semantics. But in those moments of darkness, I think of your best, not in the traditional sense. Not as a personal metric, but as a willingness to do what must be done. A removal of the spotlight from you altogether and instead pointed directly, directly at the road ahead, at the task at hand. When you choose to make the journey, not about what you can and cannot do, but instead make it about what must be done, the universe, as Paulo Coelho has so elegantly stated, conspires to make it happen.

I think back to my journey and at so many periods my best wasn't good enough. I was so lost and so overwhelmed that the only thing, I could do was not stop moving. That was my superpower, simply trudged through the fear of things falling apart, the nagging pride and hurting ego. And what I learned was that life is no different than all those miles I'd put in running, how I felt what my previous capabilities were, what I deemed my best to be. It was all noise.

It was all irrelevant. What was required was that I moved forward through the chaos. and to something better, and so I did. And in your world, so can you. The stories we tell ourselves are so powerful, and in many ways valuable in our journey through life. But there's one narrative that eliminates the necessity of so many others. You can get to the top of whatever mountain you are seeking to climb

so long as you do not stop, so long as you let go of the limitations tied to your quote-unquote best and instead do what is required to get there. You'll see how adaptable and transformative that best really is, how it's a lagging indicator. It will take time, but you're capable of being patient. And it will have its moments of chaos, but you are capable of weathering those storms.

It will present obstacles that leave you, unclear, uncertain, sometimes unprepared, but you're capable of picking your head up and moving through that hate. What you know of yourself now is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what you're capable of doing. And how far that goes will be determined not by putting a stake in the ground and calling it your personal best. But as Emerson has said, by hitching.

your wagon to a star and pulling yourself towards its light. A little bit. Les Brown has said, you don't get what you want in life. You get who you are. If you put the man together, the world responds. You build yourself up, evolve. Life around you will transform. Someone once asked me on a podcast episode about imposter syndrome.

why I think it's actually a very positive thing. And my thinking is, imposter syndrome is a sign that you're in an arena somewhat foreign to you. You're trying something new, playing the student. Anytime you do that, of course you're going to feel out of place. You have to. You don't grow without putting yourself in an environment in which growth is possible. We have to shake up the old in order to create the new, and it's that process, to Les Brown's point, that makes us who we are. It creates our reality.

Jim Rohn has said something similar in that it's not what we have, it's what we become. Having something is one thing, sure. But building yourself up to be someone who can repeatedly go out and get that thing over and over and over. again, well that's something different altogether. Are you willing to be that vulnerable to start on the ground floor and work your way up? Because here's the deal. There have been many times where I knew I had to be more than I've ever been in order to obtain something I've never had.

And if I aim to live life to the fullest, and I do, realizations like this will only continue. Everyone knows it's painful when there's a delta that exists between what you want and what you're currently capable of having or acquiring. That's a tough realization. And what epiphanies like that tend to do is leave you with a few options, right? You can run away or get better. You can surrender and find something lesser or become worthy of that thing you want.

Talk about a difficult conversation with yourself. Acknowledging that you're currently not where you need to be. The ego does not like that. It's uncomfortable. That's why so many people raise the white flag and run. It can be much easier to shake your fist at the world around you than it is to delve into the one within you. Joseph Campbell has said the hero's journey is inside you.

Throw off the veils and open the mystery of yourself. Close your eyes and imagine a world where you aren't scared to go after what you want, to grow along with your dreams, your goals, aspirations, where you walk directly into that space your curiosity is begging you to explore. Where you condition yourself to depersonalize the criticism and failure and instead focus on the becoming. That's not some crazy proposition. You're not being asked to go perform some miracle.

It's simply about giving yourself permission to evolve into what you can become, allowing water to nourish the seed that is your soul. When you look around you and feel the very human thought that is, I wish something about this was different, I challenge you to be courageous enough to point in and ask, how can I make it so? How can I level up and become the type of person that has X, that gives Y, that experiences Z?

You are capable of filling that gap. Again, not a negotiation with the world, but an agreement with yourself, to accept more discomfort in your life in exchange for the upside that comes with it. There's something to the saying, don't wish it were different, wish you were better. Because again, it places power and control in your hands to evolve and make it reality.

It's crazy to me how easy it is. And because of that, how many people complain about something their entire lives without owning the change. Becoming the person who lives differently, sees differently, feels differently. It's all there. You get in life who you are. And how incredible that who you are never ends. It's limitless. If you're willing to push, to grow and change, it is your ticket to the ride of a lifetime.

You can become so fixated on winning or losing the game that you forget to ask yourself, am I playing the right one? Is this my game? Am I setting myself up to win in an arena of significance to me? Because look, there are infinite games out there. And sometimes we find ourselves caught up in a race. We have no business running. Meaning it doesn't really do anything for us.

It's not where we want to be or should be. There's a saying by someone in a few social media outlets actually restricted my post for suggesting it was Einstein. So it might not be Mr. Einstein. But whoever said it, thank you, you're awesome. The saying goes, everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid.

Now, there are a lot of us fish out there, attempting to climb trees as we speak, wondering why we're not where we want to be. Perhaps seeing the results or lack thereof as an indication that we're insufficient, inadequate in some way. When, hey, that's not the case at all. It's that we haven't taken the time to identify our own personal intersection of what we love and what adds value to the world. We haven't manufactured those fireworks. That's something that has to be explored, found.

J.R.R. Tolkien, not all who wander are lost, right? And I think we innately fear this process of searching because it's unsettling to not know how things are going to play out. Trust me, I've been there, right? It's taxing to not have your packaged little elevator speech and a five-year vision when it seems like the whole world does. But to deprive yourself of this exploration is to potentially forfeit the very high, thing that you come to live for. Most of the time purpose doesn't fall into one's lap. You have to have your eyes open. What's meaningful must be sought out. Now, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here because our world is not black and white. It sort of lives in this gray space, right?

Can you win at someone else's game? Sure. There are a lot of people, quote unquote, succeeding in areas that are not ideal, that they don't love, that they're not their best in, but how is success being defined? I've talked extensively about my journey and all those games I used to play the targets I used to aim for. And I know a lot of people who've come to similar epiphanies, right? But when you don't realize you can exit stage left and begin again, start something new, you simply continue this same song and dance. Right? It's not life that keeps us confined. It's ignorance that keeps us confined. We simply have to be taught that there's more. And I understand to find an arena where you can

thrive in a purely historical context is a luxury. You are programmed to survive. You're not program to builds an art studio because it's your passion, right? But there lies the battle. We are at a place in time where we have collectively cultivated abundance. The phone you're using to consume this content, that little thing can be a portal that transports your thoughts, your creation, your business to the masses. You have at your fingertips access to billions of people. You have reach that humans only 30 years ago all the way back to the beginning of mankind can only dream of. The means are there. In so many ways, it's about freeing yourself to pursue the opportunity that exists all around you, because we self-limit. Alan Watts asked the

ever-important question, what would you do if money were no object? Now, in a practical world, why ask such a question. Simple, because removing those monetary constraints as you contemplate your answer allows you to truly analyze what endeavors are meaningful to you. When something is meaningful, you want to do it. When you want to do it, you immerse yourself in those little intricacies, in those details that the average person simply doesn't pay attention to. Making you so good at whatever that thing is that eventually, not only can you be the best at it, but you can monetize it and probably at a very high rate. It's not money holding you back. It's not time holding you back. It's not the external world holding you back. It's what you have been conditioned to believe that's holding you back.

You are a genius at something. You are king or queen of your empire, victor within your arena. But to realize these things, you have to, one, understand it's a possibility, and two, refuse to stay stagnant. We have to stop conceding so much while simultaneously accepting so little. Life will never provide what you do not ask for. So why? Why be scared to ask? Life won't tell you you're a fish climbing a tree, you must tell you that. Life won't expand your horizons and adjust your trajectory.

You must initiate that change. To find your genius, you must be willing to leave what's insufficient. To capture what's meaningful, you must be willing to leave what is meaningless. Let's agree to alter the question, do I have genius level talent? Because you do. And you live in a society that also rewards those who realize it. The question we need to be willing to ask is, are you willing to walk on shaky ground? to abandon, at least for a period of time, safety, and the comfort of predictability,

in order to find that genius. Are you willing to nurture the greatness that already lives within you? Because it was never a matter of ability. It's a matter of what you're willing to discover.