Transcription
Hi, it's Robin Sharma, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this mastery session. This mastery session is about five ways to get through a hard time. You're gonna learn things like how to seek perspective. You're gonna learn how to leverage hard and difficult times for your growth. You're gonna learn things like how to embrace the purification, so you literally take what's causing you pain and allow it to bring you into your true power. So I know you're gonna find this mastery session rich, not only with philosophy and insights, but some great tools that will allow you to do amazing things in your life. So thank you for making the time with me, and let's get right into the first one.
Seek perspective. The first way for you to get through a hard time is seek perspective. Here's a question I want to ask you: When you're going through a hard time, do you ask yourself, "How could this be worse?" If no one has died, well then you know it's only upside. So seek perspective is really the first insight I want you to offer. Perspective: Has anyone died here? How could this be worse? What are my blessings? What's good here? What am I grateful for? Perspective is a is a really important thing to be playing with as you're navigating a challenging time.
I remember I was in a in a in a country on a speaking tour, and it was a quite a poor country. And it was I was walking to the restaurant to have a dinner, and as I walked there, I had to walk through this place where there were still, I'd like these these shacks. And I still remember, you know, as a star-filled sky, and I saw this young girl, I'm guessing she was about 12 years old, and she was sitting alone, and she was eating a piece of bread, and she had the largest smile on her face, and her eyes were sparkling. So amidst all of that difficulty, she found perspective and she linked to her blessings. Makes me think of the lotus. The lotus is a flower that grows in swamps, and yet it's one of the most beautiful flowers in the world. So this first way to navigate hard times is to really gather perspective, to really ask yourself, you know, to go up to your mountaintop and then look, look across, and really get a sense of the truth of what's going on. You know, your gratitude, what you're grateful for, how could this be worse? Perspective also involves remembering the shortness of life. You know, we live on a tiny planet in a large galaxy with trillions of other planets. Are our problems really that big? That's perspective.
Okay, that brings me to point number two: to handle and transcend and get through hard times, which is really this: leverage for growth. What is leverage for growth means? Well, it simply means that hard times are nothing more than growth coming to get you in wolf's clothing. I'm going to repeat that again with great love and respect, because it's important. Hard times, we all go through hard times. It's really nothing more than growth in wolf's clothing. And the real game of the legend and history-maker and Titan and a hero is growth. It's about taking your gifts and your talents and materializing them each day. And how do you do that? You do that by using every single thing that happens to you, good or bad, as grist for the mill. In other words, using everything that happens to you, painful and poetic, to make you stronger and to introduce you to the primal hero that lives at the core of every human heart.
I've gone through some very difficult times in my life, sometimes where I was down on my knees, sometimes when I was so confused, sometimes when I was in the valley of darkness. And one of the things that helped me most, and that will help you as you navigate your turmoil and pain-filled seasons of life, you say, "How can I use this to grow? How can I use this to shatter the covering over my ego so I become more creative, more productive, more loving, more of service, more on fire, more of a history-maker to humanity in my own unique way?" If you look at the greatest people off the planet, the truth, the true leaders, the true history-makers, the true servants of humanity, if you look at the greatest business builders, if you look at the greatest artists, they all had one thing in common: they suffered more than the ordinary person. If you look at the root of the word passion, it is to suffer. The root of the word passion is to suffer. The great ones suffer for their craft, they suffer for their mission, they suffer suffer for their ambitions, they suffer for their service. So the second point, or the second way to get through hard times, is simply always be asking yourself, "How can I use this to serve me, to make me stronger, more creative, tougher, braver, and more authentic?"
The third way to get through a hard time is to feel to heal. I want you to remember that, friend. If you want to heal it, you need to feel it. People come to me all the time, "Robin, I'm heartbroken. Robin, there's someone trying to attack me. Robin, I've lost a business. Robin, I'm dealing with an illness. What do I do with all the pain?" Well, here's the point number three: feel it to heal it. You know about my four interior empires model that is currently disrupting the field of personal mastery, elite performance, and leadership? It's not only mindset, that's only the first interior empire. The second one is heart set. The third one is health set. The fourth one is soul set. I go into it in great detail in my book, The 5 AM Club. Here's the point I want to share with you right now in this mastery session on interior empire number two, heart set, that is how you turn pain into power. A lot of people say, "Well, it's all about mindset. You know, read the books on going, getting through difficult time, read the books on amplifying your psychology." I want to introduce you to this new word I'm offering: heart set. So when you're going through a difficult time, society says, "Run away from the pain, run away from the sadness, run away from the anger." What I'm suggesting to you is, to heal the wound that someone caused you, or condition caused you, or an experience has set up within you, you need to go into your heart set and feel it to release it.
You know, a lot of us have within us what I call the hurt well. What's the hurt well? Well, we get disappointed, we experience loss, we we get rejected. All those human things that happen as we build a career, build a business, build a life. That's just life happening. And what society says is, "Run away from the pain. Don't feel weak." People feel. And yet the reality is, if you look at psychology, if you look at emotionality, in order to release a toxic feeling, the best way out is straight in. That's the power of purifying your heart set. And so the way number three of dealing with a hard time is, whatever the the toxic feeling is, just start feeling it. It's like a little kid, you know, you fall or you get hurt, and you cry, and then two minutes later, you're running around with your friends in the sunshine. Feelings are like rainstorms. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And if you could only feel it and have the bravery to go into the sadness, the disappointment, the self-loathing, it would dissipate and it would clear, and the wound would heal.
What I'm sharing with you right now is so absolutely profound because if you don't clear the lower-energy feelings, you do set up this subconscious hurt well deep within you. All the suppressed anger, suppressed sadness, suppressed rejection, suppressed disappointment. You think it's not there? It's this subconscious hurt well, well of hurt that influences, that blocks you from intimacy and fluency with your creativity, your energy, your productivity, your bravery, and your authenticity. I mean, we do have a primal hero deep within us. We are built to be on fire. We're built to be geniuses. We're built to be loving. But because of all these emotions that are not pleasurable that we get to experience, this is one of the gifts of our time. We get to experience them during hard times. If we don't feel them, it sets up the hurt well. And this is one of the primary reasons we are not legends on the planet. We are we build this blockade with our greatness. You say, "You are your own worst enemy." And what I mean by that is, the world is full of opportunity. You already have the gifts and talents within you. You might not be intimate with that relationship because of the hurt well. So this third point, this third way to get through a hard time, is so powerful. Use the hard time to pay attention to the difficult feelings. And as you build that awareness of, "Oh, I'm feeling a lot of pain," or, "You know, I'm angry," don't listen to society that says run away from the feelings. Go right into them. Feel them, and then release them.
And I mean, I could spend a whole hour on on this third point. But just remember another thing: every feeling is old. So if someone has betrayed you, for example, the feelings that you're feeling that you might be projecting and blaming on to that person, well, you wouldn't be feeling those feelings unless they were pre-existing conditions. I guess what I'm suggesting to you is, if it's hysterical, it's historical. If it's hysterical, it's his its historical. The larger the feeling, the more you know it probably came from something that happened to you in your childhood. Do you the gold here? You get to say, "Well, it's not about that person, or it's not about the current event that I'm thinking. It's about this is about my childhood. This is about this hurt well deep within me." And thanks to that person, thanks to this so-called tragedy or difficult condition, I get to see what's really going on and blocking me from that primal genius within me. And I get to do the deep inner work that every brave soul does to release the shadow side and move into the sunlight.
Okay, well, that brings us to the fourth way to get through a hard time, which is appreciate the season. Well, you know, our world and our global culture is very much about joy, joy, joy, happy, happy faces, selfies in bikinis and speedos. Maybe I'm not getting a little too graphic here. But it's all about chasing happiness. What I want to remind you of, because your heart knows the truth, heroes don't just live in the sunshine. What made Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King? What made JFK, JFK? What made Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa? What makes Joe Michele Basquiat, the great artist who he was? What makes a titan of industry so powerful? What makes a a great humanitarian or a great mother or father, or firefighter, or pizza maker, who they are? Is really not who they are in the times when they're at the top of the mountain. We become heroes of our lives by how we end or and navigate the periods that break our hearts. And I suggest to you with great love and respect that if you really want to live a rich life, then appreciate the seasons. We all get our times in the sun. And every authentic, real, fully alive human life has those sea seasons when we're away from the world and we're in the wilderness.
One of my favorite books is The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. And if you're going through a hard time right now, I'd encourage you to read that book. And I'd encourage you to read the two chapters: one is on sorrow, and one is on pain. And then one of those chapters, he says, you know, difficult times come to you to crack the shell that covers your understanding. You see, it's only your ego, which is your weak self, your weak side, that is judging this difficult time as quote-unquote bad. You, the deeper, higher, wiser part of you, that is being cracked open by this seeming tragedy or painful time, knows this is your this is a great time. This is the best worst time you've ever had. And so what I'm suggesting to you is, difficult times do come. There's a natural order to life. There's natural seasons. I think a lot of life, there's this symphony and orchestrated brilliance to life. Because as you go through this difficult time right now, I promise you, there will be a time. It could be a week from now, it could be two years from now, where you look back at this and say, "Wow, that really was the best worst time I've ever had, and I see why it happened to me because I needed to learn this lesson, and it made me who I now am." I couldn't have written the books that I've written. I couldn't be here with you now, speaking from a place of truth and sharing and service to you, if I hadn't gone through my difficult times. Because those times have sculpted me and made me who I now am. Am I perfect? Far from it. Am I happy with who I am right now, with all my flaws and scars? Absolutely. So I'd say to you, wear your scars proudly, and turn your wounds into wisdom, and use your stumbling blocks and make them into stepping stones, because that is the game the legends play.
Okay, and that brings me to the final of the five ways to get through a hard, which has really embraced the purification. So when I have really been knocked down and turned around and, you know, fallen apart and been attacked or, you know, maligned, I know that sounds like a bad country song. You know, as I say in in The 5 AM Club, if if you know, my dog got into trouble and, you know, my gal left me, you know, it'd be a number one country song hit. All I'm saying, you know, there's a smile on my face because that's perspective, isn't it? We can't take ourselves too seriously, otherwise no one's gonna take us seriously. But the fifth way to get through our hard times is really embrace the purification. And when I've been really knocked down, I just go, "I am being purified." It's like, you know, how do you make gold? Not that I'm some gold specialist, but there's the dross, right? All of that non-valuable stuff that's covering the gold. And so you purify it into the fire, and it burns off the dross. It burns away everything that is not the gold.
I was in Thailand a number of years ago to do a Leadership event, and I was blessed to be in Bangkok, and I saw the Golden Buddha. And I don't know if you know the story of the Golden Buddha, but basically centuries ago, you know, they built this gorgeous Golden Buddha that was absolutely priceless. I mean, there's towering golden Buddha, pure gold. And then foreign invaders were set to attack. So the Thai people said, "We've got to protect this national treasure." So they came up with this story, it was or this strategy, which was to put layer after layer after layer of mud over the golden Buddha. And sure enough, the invaders come in, and they saw the mud, and they didn't know what it was. They attacked, and they pillaged, but they left the nation. And years later, someone was walking by this seemingly invaluable mountain of mud. But guess why? They saw a sparkle coming from the mountain of mud. And so he got a bunch of other people, and they started chipping away at layer upon layer upon layer of mud that was covering the golden Buddha. And as they chipped away more mud, they could see more gold. And they got through the next layer of mud, and they could see more intimacy with the goal. And they kept on going until behold, in front of them was this towering treasure and golden Buddha of pure gold. My friend, you are pure gold.
I could get into the neuroscience. I could talk about the pharmacy of mastery. I could talk about neuroplasticity. I could talk about epigenetics, which confirms you are not your genetics. Your ecosystem is much more powerful. I could get into, you know, deep neuroscience. I could talk about transient hypofrontality, which is every brain's natural ability to move out of the neocortex, which is the seat of thinking, and to get deep into the the delta-wave state, which you have within you right now, if you structure your life in the right way, which is the seat of genius that lives inside every human brain. And you know, this is the advanced minds have discovered this secret order of thinking, which allowed them to tap into their latent genius. All I want to say on this fifth way to get through a hard time is, it is in your greatest trials that you discover your highest strengths. And everything that happens to you that the ego judges as bad is actually a gift that has come to you for your purification, to burn away all that is not off your genius and your gold. A bad day for the ego is an awesome day for your soul and your primitive genius.
So I hope this mastery session has helped you a lot. I've given my heart and soul in this one, so I hope you feel how much I care. And I help you. Here's what I would encourage you to do: Number one, if you have found this mastery session valuable, please share it with three people as quickly as possible, and then start the conversation with them about everything that you learned. Number two, if you would like me to mentor you, and you want to go a hundred X deeper into this kind of material that I've shared on whether it's neuroscience or the philosophy of greatness, if you really want to multiply and accelerate your productivity, if you really want to bring your fire and your primitive and primal hero is into the world, and you're tired of playing small, when you're tired of limiting yourself, well then I would love to work with you if you're that kind of person. And there is information below on my monthly mentoring program. It's absolutely world-class. It's called Circle of Legends. And if you feel you want to work at legend area and live that heroic life that I truly believe you're destined to live, check out the information below in Circle of Legends, and I'd love to be of service to you in the program.
Finally, if you haven't read my book, The 5 AM Club, oh, I spent four years of hard labor working on The 5 AM Club. And essentially, it's 333 pages of me distilling the best ideas I've learned over two decades working with billionaires and companies like Starbucks, General Electric, Knight, Nike, Microsoft, IBM, and and organizations like NASA and Young Presidents Organization. And so read The 5 AM Club. I promise you, it will be a tool for transformation and a manifesto for absolute mastery. To find the book, you can find it online, or just go over to the 5amclub.com. And I'm really excited to share that after you finish the book, at the end of the book, there is a free, and I want to emphasize free, because I really want to help you lock in the 5 AM Club habit. It is the mother of all habits. You get your morning, write your days will be right. Your days are world-class. You level work last weeks, quarters, and years. The single best move you can make is to join the 5 AM Club, run the 2020 20 formula that I walk you through in the book, because as you begin your day, so you handcraft your life. And I'm excited to share at the end of the book, you will find details for a free 66-day online program where after you finish the book for 66 days, which is the period of time required to install a new habit, I will literally mentor you through morning mastery meditations and videos at no charge for 66 days until you reach the point that researchers call automaticity, where it actually becomes easier to get up at 5 AM than not to get up at 5 AM.
Final thing I want to share with you: a portion of my royalties on every copy of The 5 AM Club sold goes to fight leprosy on the planet. It's a violent affliction. I am all-in to help fight leprosy as much as I he only can. So when you invest in a copy of The 5 AM Club, you not only invest in your growth and transformation, you invest in helping a child with leprosy live a better life. Okay, so thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next mastery session. And be great. This is Robin Sharma. I hope you received great value from this mastery session. If you'd like to receive potent training videos, blog posts, learning tools, and information on my two live events, Personal Mastery Academy and my flagship four-day experience, The Titan Summit, go ahead and visit Robin Sharma. [Music]