Transcription
So we created this in our minds: false evidence appearing real. We made it real in our minds. That's why churches said there's nothing to fear but fear itself. That's the destructive monster.
So turn off things that can contribute to your fear. Turn a deaf ear to people that all they can do is talk about how negative things are because they have bought into the consciousness of the world. Start attending workshops, seminars, and listening to tapes on a daily basis to begin to recondition your mind, to retrain your thinking.
Faith comes by what? Hearing and hearing and hearing. Listen to things that can empower you, that can enable you to create a new reality for yourself and a new life for yourself. You might appear to be strange around most people. You know, most people think you're strange if you're happy today.
People say, "How you doing?" I said, "Better than good." Whoa, what's wrong with him? Just go around smiling and watch people look at you. Is this a weird guy over here? Because most people don't smile. Watch them look at their faces in the morning. Here we go, another Monday morning. How you doing? Haven't had my coffee yet, don't ask me.
See, these people have not found their purpose in life. That's why they're grumpy. That's why they're miserable. That's why they're so negative. They're hurting, and they want to hurt other people.
So start practicing using programs for your mind: seminars, books, workshops. Keep a journal. Record your thoughts, what's happening with you every day. When you get up, have a journal near you. I use the Jack Bolen Journal so that I can write down my ideas. I keep it by my bed so I can write down my thoughts.
See, ladies and gentlemen, we get three to four thoughts a year that, if we would act on those thoughts, they can change our life. When you don't have a true appreciation and acceptance for who you are, and you allow yourself to be immobilized by fear, what happens in the process is that you begin to abuse yourself.
You begin to sabotage your life. You begin to sabotage your dreams. You begin to unconsciously work against yourself. You become your own worst enemy. So what do you do about that?
Well, you begin to realize that your dream and your gifts have so much meaning and so much value for you that your hunger for them will begin to push you past the fear. Your hunger to have them will give you a special drive as you work on yourself.
As you begin to acknowledge your true identity, the true power that you have, the true capacity you have to bring about change, the miracle-working power that you have within yourself to do the things that you want to do when you take them on.
I'm reminded of a man who was doing a special study of a special tribe in Africa, headhunters. He had difficulty in developing a relationship with these tribesmen because of the fact that he had fear. He had fear they would take his head.
So he worked there for a long time with no effort, no progress in developing relationship and rapport, and being able to achieve a level of trust. Finally, one night while he was in bed, he was thinking about, "What is it that you came here to do? What does your life work as a missionary?"
He said, "I wanted to study these tribesmen." He said, "What's the worst thing that they can do to you? Kill you?" And he just decided, "Hey, this is what I came here to do. I know that there's some risk involved, and I'm going to do it, come what may."
He said, "I'm not going to be afraid anymore." He went back the next day and he started doing the work, trying to talk to and interview many of the members of this tribe, and they began to respond to him. They threw out the welcome mat to him.
Years later, when people came to see what his progress was, they asked him, "How were you able to do this? How did you convert the relationship from being hostile to that of being positive?" He said something I think has value for all of us.
He said, "When life can no longer threaten you with death, what else is there?" The majority of the fears that we have are not life or death fears. They're not those kinds of fears, but through our imagination, we blow them out of proportion.
We give them more power than they actually have or deserve, and we permit them to govern our lives. We permit them to determine how far we can stretch out on our dreams and discovering our stuff.
As we begin to look at ourselves and begin to assess ourselves, we just say, "Wait a minute, hold a minute. I've been sweating this out. What's the worst thing that can happen to me on this? Will it kill me? Will I die? Why am I going through all of these changes over this? How much power does this really have? And am I the one that's feeding the power into it?"
See, a lot of times we allow ourselves to be fed and to be programmed to being afraid. If you watch the news and read the newspaper, you'll be scared to come out the house. Am I right? You'd be afraid.
So what kinds of things, what kinds of thoughts are you feeding your consciousness? What kind of things are you putting in your mind that will enable you to either move forward or to justify why you're staying where you are?
I used to be a door-to-door salesman. I had X number of TVs. I had a minimum amount that I knew I had to sell every day in order to provide for my mother, who was ill at the time and had lost her job at the M&M cafeteria because of arthritis.
I said, "I'm going to go door to door." Sometimes I would not come home until 1:00 at night, knocking on people's doors. People closing, "What do you want? Would you like to buy a nice working month's television set? No money down."
"What about an Emerson TV?" "No, thank you very much. Do you know anybody else that would be interested?" "No, thank you very kindly." Knock, going another. "Hello, would you like to buy a nice working television set? No money down."
"No, get away from our door, thank you very kindly. Do you know anybody else?" "Yeah, my cousin, he lives two doors down." "Thank you very kindly. I tell him you sent me."
"Now, hey, your cousin told me that you wanted to buy a television set. Told me to come here and talk to you. We got a special discount for you." "Yes, come in, I'm interested."
I would just keep right on. I would not go home until I did it. It's an interesting thing, ladies and gentlemen, that when we put ourselves in a situation where we say we're going to do it, it puts you in another zone where the universe responds to you when you have that kind of consciousness.
See, the universe responds to the man or woman that refuses to be denied because that is your commitment. That business that you want, that book you want to write, that dream that you have of controlling your destiny, that is yours.
That power to create that and to manifest that is yours. That's available to you, but you've got to be willing to stand there and face disappointment, not have support, be lonely, doubt yourself sometimes, be rejected again and again and again, become bankrupt if necessary again and again and again, and refuse to turn around until life gives it up.
Nothing can resist a person that has that kind of commitment. The people that have made a difference on the planet, when John F. Kennedy said, "We will go to the moon in the next decade," he spoke it. That was a commitment, and people shared that vision.
People bought into that. We've had all kinds of examples in history where people have made declarations, who have committed their lives to bring about a difference. There are people who are taking a stand today against hunger.
I guarantee you it will be a part of our past at some point in time. Someone took a stand against polio. It no longer plagues us as it once did because someone said, "It is my commitment to eradicate it from the face of the Earth."
Someone made the commitment. The reason that we're here and enjoying the democracy that we have is that someone made a commitment that whatever is required, if it means that I die.
I remember Paul Robeson: "Here I stand, for I can do no other." And that's how you must be. Commitment means standing up for your life. It means honoring yourself.
It means beginning to say and to see and recognize your alignment and oneness with the universe, and that you are a channel for life to express through. We short-circuit it with anger. We short-circuit it with fear.
We short-circuit it with envy. We short-circuit it by being lazy or apathetic or giving up easily. Why? Why? Why? We say, "Oh, it's too hard, it's too hard."
We don't challenge our spirit, ladies and gentlemen. There's nothing as powerful as the human spirit. You can't destroy it. You can pervert it, but you can't destroy it.
I was reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl. What a powerful book! I'm reading it now for the seventh time, and he gives so many graphic examples of the power of the human spirit.
So what are some of the things that can fortify us and give us the kind of inner strength that will allow us to move ourselves into the future by manifesting our commitments?
Number one: commitment means, in some cases, going back to school, getting some training, sitting up in class with people younger than you, putting yourself in a position where you don't know, and that is awkward and uncomfortable.
But because of your commitment to develop yourself or to go back to school to get a high school diploma or to get a college degree, it doesn't matter feeling dumb and saying, "What am I doing here sitting up in some boring class?"
Commitment could mean a lot of things. It could mean that you begin to go back. You've got to back up sometimes. It means to back up and not give up, to regroup, back up and regroup, and come back again because life has waylaid you because you got knocked down.
I think that it's very important that you start trusting yourself. Listen to yourself. Listen to that still small voice within you. Don't try and make everything logical.
There are some things about life that defy logic, that you just can't explain how the outcome is going to be. That once you begin to trust yourself and your ideas and your instincts, life takes on a whole new meaning.
Because now I want you to do that feeling that you are led. Just feel, "I am led." I remember the worst speech I had ever given in my life. I let someone exploit a fear that I had for years.
I had a tremendous inferiority complex because I'm not college educated, and this person knew this. She said, "Let me write this speech for you. You're going to speak at Ohio State University. Those people are very educated there, and they're going to know when you make grammatical errors."
"And they're going to know because of the substance of your speech that you are not literate. I care about you. I don't want you to embarrass yourself."
So this person proceeded to write a speech for me. I had a speech in my mind, but this person was stronger than I was negatively than I was positive about my own thoughts.
I gave my power away. With my permission, I allowed this person to guide me to do something that I really didn't want to do, but I didn't feel enough inner strength and conviction about my skills as a speaker and the message that I had to bring to stick by my guns.
I got up there at the Ohio Union, and I read this straight speech. I did not move and did not take my eyes off the page because I'm not accustomed to reading.
After I finished, people gave me a standing ovation because I read it extremely well, and I was very tense and I was very nervous. Ladies and gentlemen, don't give your power away.
You don't need anybody to approve your dream. It was given to you. If they can't see it, it's because it wasn't given to them. It was given to you. Hold it, nourish it, cultivate it, work on it.
It's yours. It's your baby. Work on it until it comes into fruition. I gave away my power, and I said, "I'm not going to do that no more."
Here's something else for those who make it today: do what you know is right. Treat people like you want to be treated. Don't try and take any shortcuts. Don't try and cheat. Pay your dues up front.
I believe, ladies and gentlemen, what goes around comes around. You can pay now or you will pay double later. So do the right thing.
There might be a tendency sometimes because of the negative part of our consciousness and our own programming for us to want to say, "Well, I'll just do it this time. It won't matter. Nobody will know."
Ladies and gentlemen, everything matters. And you know you're somebody. You know, I’d rather lose out on my dream doing the right thing than cheat trying to make a shortcut to get to my goal.
I want to be able to look myself in the mirror, and that's what you want to do. There's a saying: judge a man not by what he does but by that that he doesn't have to do.
To judge the true quality of a man is what do you do when nobody's looking? See, there's some good out there for you in the universe that has your name on it, and nobody can get your good.
It has your name on it. They can't take your stuff. It's your stuff. So when you know that, when you know that whatever you're seeking, it's also seeking you, you don't worry.
You don't run scared. You don't think somebody's going to take it from you. You listen to your inner voice, and you always take the high road.
There will be the tendency, the natural inclination to take the low road. You must resist that. Here's something else I encourage you to do if you want to make it: keep your agreements.
Keep your agreements that you make and establish a network of people who will also do that. Establish a network of people in your life that you can count on, that will be there for you when you need them, and you be there for them.
Here's the other thing: as you're working on your dream, a lot of people have been calling me saying, "Hey man, I read about you in Ebony. Boy, you're lucky."
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something. Here's something else: three P's to have in your life when working on your dream and doing your life work: you must be patient, persistent, and positive no matter what.