Transcription
The most important decision of your life is deciding whether you're truly committed to being happy, no matter what. Because life is going to throw all kinds of curveballs at all of us. So the greatest gift you could give yourself is, I believe, to make that decision and say life is too short to suffer. It doesn't matter what happens, you're going to find something to enjoy and appreciate. You find what you're looking for.
You want to get sad, go read all the negative stuff. It's there, unlimited. You want to be happy, go find all the free content around happiness, self-fulfillment, positivity. It's all there. You find what you're looking for. I'm not an advocate of toxic positivity or rose-colored glasses necessarily, but I do believe that you get to choose the thing that you're going to go looking for. And if you can get up and say, "I'm going to go out and find some evidence of a good day," the likelihood of you having one is just higher.
That gratitude allows me to have perspective at the end of the day as opposed to focusing on all the horrible things or the bad stuff. It brings me back to perspective that my life is, my life is amazing. Even if it's horrible, my life is amazing. Even if it's the worst day ever and everything's against me and I lose all my money and something else bad happens, it's still incredible. You focus so much on the negative that you forget all the positive. And then when you do think about the positive, you're not putting the energy in the positive like you put in the negative.
I know how to talk negative just like you know how to talk negative. But it don't work. It don't help nobody because if I put my energy into something negative, automatically my body's going to respond and I'm going to start doing negative stuff. I was homeless too. My father wasn't in my life too. I've been in struggles too. But I've come to realize that when you think optimistically and you speak positively, you can speak those things which are not as though they were. You can say certain things out your mouth and make it happen.
Positive thinking is not about being delusional. Positive thinking is about learning how to take control of internal processes and understanding that that will shape your external environment. But it's about remaining in control of the internal landscape. It's about knowing that despite shifts in the external landscape, you're going to be okay. This wave of betrayal, this wave of fear, this wave of grief, this wave of frustration, this wave of feeling stuck, this wave of feeling hopeless—it's temporary. It will come and it will go. And when you realize that emotions are temporary, it also gives you perspective to know that something better is coming.
One of my mentors, she had this business card that she used to give out to people and it said that her greatest regret in life is trading in what she wanted in the bigger picture for what she wanted in that moment. And I always think about my life in that way: is this what I want for the greater good for my story to be, or am I acting at a place of desire? Am I acting at a place of wanting to change the way that I feel right now, knowing that that will hinder me? That's not really what I want. What place am I coming from?
Smart people like the idea of being cynical because it seems like you've considered all of the options. Only somebody that's a smooth-brained idiot would believe that things are going to go well, but it fails to recognize that your experience of your life is largely determined by the story that you tell yourself about it. Well, I think it's the idea of going, look, you can change the way that you think about things. So, I was thinking about things in I can do this narrow bandwidth of things. My belief system, the assumptions I'd made about life—well, you can get a job and you can work for someone and after you get a job and you work for 40 years, you get a pension and then you get the pay. I was on a conveyor belt. Sure. And suddenly I went, "Oh, I could believe anything. I could believe that I could do anything. I could believe that I could be the guy on the TV show telling jokes." And you can.
What you believe dictates your life. You'll, you'll be the barrier. You'll be the thing that stops you. Life itself is what we deem it. That's exactly right. It is what we deem it. And, and, and so you have to be relentlessly protective of the information that you take in, the thoughts that occupy your mind, the people that you surround yourself with because all of those things are influence factors. Another Stoic philosopher once said that, you know, when you leave your house and when you come back that night, you come back as a different man. You're never the same man coming back, right? Well, you're either coming back as a better human, more transcendent, more aware, more, more connected or not. So every single day for me it starts at, you know, ground zero. I'm humble and I'm listening and my mind is open and this is what I've seen and this is what I can tell you about. Everything that I look at, I try and look at from a humble perspective. If, and if you don't do that, it's going to be in rubble. Perspective is everything. Let's go.
I need you to hear me loud and clear. How you see this thing is everything. I just limited envy and jealousy and I leaned into optimism and gratitude. You're deeply unhappy. Instead of blaming everyone else for it, put in the work to get out of it, cuz you can. I believe in people. I believe in you. How will you see the rest of your day? Because how you see the rest of your day will often times determine the way you see the rest of your life.
Working on yourself, talking to yourself, that's so very important. Overcoming the negative conversation, that inner dialogue that's going on all the time. All the time. Even when you don't want it to be there, you can't stop yourself right now from thinking. You can't do it. It's going on. And so, learning how to empower yourself. Part of doing that is standing up to yourself. You got to stand up inside yourself sometimes and say, "Shut up." When are you going to realize that you got to get to a point and focus on the better things that are going to get you to the next level and beyond in your life?
Persistence, consistency, resilience, courage, establishing your priorities, mastering self-awareness, maintaining focus, believing that your help is coming. Because if your dream only requires you, it's not big enough. Most people go through life never discovering what their talents are. Most people never develop their talents. They have skills and abilities, but if you don't nurture them, if you don't develop them, they will never serve you. Your gifts can take you many places. If you develop your gifts, all you got to do is realize that it's up to you to make a difference in your life. The only reason you're not the best right now is because you don't believe you're the best now. And when you walk out this room, I want you to go in, I'm the best right now. He said, before you even become number one, start to proclaim it and say it long before it happens.
So there are those of you who want to mimic their behavior. It's not their behavior you need. It's their mindset that you need. It's the way they think is what you need. You need to start to believe you have something that you brought to the universe and that if you decide that my life deserves my developing this what I do well and becoming the best at it and mastering myself and seeing what I have within me. If you decide to drop your buckets where you are and develop your gifts, I grant you you'll never ever be without. I grant you that your gifts will take you places that will literally amaze you. I grant you that if you begin to work to develop your gifts, you'll develop a strong sense of happiness. You'll get a larger vision of yourself. Because part of beginning to get a larger vision of yourself, all of us need some area of our lives where we can have a feeling of competence that people know when they think about this area. That's something you do, that you eat and sleep that and that you do that, you do that and people know it.
I don't care what it is that you're trying to achieve, what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to give, how you're trying to evolve, what you are looking to become, everything rises and falls on your perspective. If you decide to maintain a sense of integrity with yourself that if I speak it, I'm going to live it. That's who I am. I know you hate the gym. I know you hate to lift weights. I know you hate cardio. I know you don't like drinking water. I know you don't like taking care of yourself and you think it's the hardest thing to do in the world to commit. But there is somebody who's in the grave today. And if they had another opportunity to live, they would enthusiastically, with great confidence and courage and consistency, do what you hate just to live a little longer.
Find the positive. See the bigger picture. Guard your gratitude. What price are you willing to pay to make the dream a reality? But just look forward. Look forward to the best of you. Look forward to the mistakes you may make. Look forward to the failures that may come your way. And don't give up on yourself. Don't throw the towel in so quickly. Many people give up on the one-yard line. It's up to you to understand that you do matter and that you got some work to do. I would rather you confront, fight, and fail than for you just to settle for the comfort of remaining the same. Change is tough, but change is possible for some of you.
The world's not going to become easier all of the sudden. No, as you mature, you're going to have more responsibilities, more things that people expect out of you. But the truth is, you can do hard things. Truth is, as long as there's breath in your lungs, there's hope in your heart. Ask yourself, what's my dream? What's my dream? You think you're just here to work on a job, pay the bills, keep a roof over your head, a car note, and then die. Come on, give me a break. Raise the bar on yourself. Challenge yourself. Decide you're not going to be the same person. I want you to have the mindset that you're going to live an expanded vision of yourself and you're going to go all in.
I don't know your name, but I know you have a dream. You may be listening to me in your closet, your bedroom, the gym, the car, the bus, the train, the plane. I don't know where you're going, but I know you are going somewhere. You've got a destination. Keep a no-excuse mentality that the sky is not your limit. The sky is your starting point. I never get turned off every single day. I want my destiny. I want my dream. You got to have this vision of yourself beyond your circumstances. You got to see yourself every day. I can do this. I can make this happen. I'm blessed and highly favored. Good things are supposed to happen to me. You got to see yourself every day and get out of your mind those old thoughts, that old belief system every day. You've got to sell yourself on that it's possible.
See, let me share something with you. The easiest thing I've ever done was to earn a million dollars. The most difficult thing I've ever done was to believe it could happen to me. We all want to do something. We all want to be somebody. We all want to go somewhere. And these things are going to happen. We've got to stop habitually gravitating to excuse. You've got a destiny to fulfill. You've got a purpose to walk into. You've got a test to pass. You've got dots to connect, rooms to walk in, stages to stand on, and tables to sit down at. But you got to put a new mind in you. You got to get out of your mind. You got to begin to restructure your thinking. I'm ready to do this for my family. I'm ready to do this for my mother. I'm ready to win for my father. I'm ready to make history and ready to do something that nobody ever thought I could do.
And we mistake the fact that we're supposed to be comfortable 24/7. Well, let me tell you something. Comfortable is equivalent to complacent. It's not always about the accomplishment. It's about the effort. I choose not to be a common man. It's my right to be uncommon if I can. I seek opportunity, not security. I want to take the calculated risk, to dream, and to build, to fail, and to succeed. I refuse to live from hand to mouth. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence. The thrill of fulfillment to the stale karma of utopia. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It's my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid to face the world boldly and say this I have done.
Who doubt you? I'm worried when you doubt you because when you doubt you, you can't get nothing done. When you doubt you, every little thing that gets in your way turns you back. When you doubt you, all of a sudden things just seem to be harder. But out of everybody who doubts you, you can't doubt you. You got to believe in you. You got to believe in your ability. You got to believe that you can win. We get one opportunity to come this way. We get one shot. We got one life to live. Life is too short to make excuses.
So, I just came to talk to the game changers and to the change agents who are willing to confront any part of you that's not speaking to your madly, wildly amazing future. When somebody is in love with who they've been called to become, what they've been called to fulfill, what they've been destined to do, there is no day off. I'm telling you, don't wait another moment. Don't wait another day. Don't wait another minute. It's lonely. It's challenging. It requires discipline. It requires perseverance. It's a mindset. It's not over until I win. People that make excuses are not connected to their destination. They don't have an endgame. They don't have a goal. You have allowed yourself to become a weak link covered under the blanket of excuses.
But I'm just wondering if there's anybody here that has a dream. I am ready. Come on. Come on. I am ready. Come on. Let me one more time. I am ready. The pen has always been in your hand. I say write a story that's going to be damn good to read and ask yourself, what's my dream? What are you willing to do that you've never done before? What are you willing to say that you've never said before? When, when you live like a warrior, you are vigilant. You're courageous. You, you, you take initiative. You're ambitious. You have an expanded vision of yourself. You're going to take some chances on you. You're going to bet on you. You don't settle for any and everything when you're a warrior. And you got to be in fight mode. You got to be ready to fight. Life is a fight for territory. Once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over.
This is the year for reset. This is the year for restart. This is the year for reignite. This is the year for repeat the things that you love. This is the year for recommit. This is the year for redesign. This is the year for re-engage. This is the year for restart. This is that year. Fight like a warrior and die a legend. If you want to start to feel happy, it starts with you wanting to feel happy. We like to sit and dwell. We like to sit in our own sadness. Make sure you're spending time every single day. Whether it's 15, 20 minutes, whether it's an hour, 2 hours, take time to allow your mind separation from the stresses of your day. If you expect to fail, you will fail. On the other hand, if you expect to win, you will win.
And he's right because doctors and psychologists, both alike, they agree that worrying actually does shorten your life and it does damage your body. We need to clear our thinking before we go to sleep. We're talking about a book that Norman Vincent Peale wrote, The Power of Positive Thinking. Let's kick this off with golden nugget number one: creating your own inner happiness. You are responsible for your own happiness because unhappiness is usually the byproduct of you thinking sad thoughts, you having these negative feelings, you having resentment towards others, and just having an overall crappy outlook on life. So if you think those things, what do you think is going to happen? You have to force yourself to not think those negative thoughts. Peale says we have to get into the happiness habit by thinking upbeat, cheery thoughts throughout the day. We like to sit and dwell. We like to sit in our own sadness. I don't like to do that, but I just know that sometimes my brain forces me to do that. I don't know why. So, I have to force myself to not do that. I have to put on upbeat music. I have to go do something productive. I have to get in the gym. I have to go hang around friends going to make me laugh. And it's tough. At first, it doesn't feel right. It feels like you're forcing it because you are forcing it. But eventually it starts to make you feel better. There are miracles happening all around you. There is beauty all around you. Open your eyes and look. Can you see the sun shining? Great. Can you hear the birds chirping? Great. Can you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin? Awesome. There's simple beauties all around us. If you want to start to feel happy, it starts with you wanting to feel happy. So short-circuit those negative thoughts. And when you start to feel bad, when you start to find yourself gossiping, feeling guilty, feeling angry, feeling whatever it is you're feeling that's negative, turn that around. Force yourself to think positively. Do positive things. And while it doesn't feel right at first, keep going. You're on the right path.
Golden nugget number two: the antidote to anxiety. People waste a lot of their time, a lot of their energy fuming and fretting about things that they cannot control. Go back to Covey's principle: Circle of Concern, Circle of Influence. Focus only on those things in the circle of influence. Everything else in the circle of concern, you can't control. You can't affect that. So move on. Don't allow your mind to just spend time in that space. You're wasting your mind's energy. So as part of this antidote to anxiety, Peale says that we need to slow down to relieve our anxiety and to attain peace. And he suggests meditation. He suggests that we devote at least 15 minutes daily to calming and relaxing ourselves by thinking peaceful thoughts or not thinking anything at all. So something he shares in the book is to help get rid of the tendency to worry and get angry, we to relax and spend a few minutes thinking about beautiful peaceful settings, hearing the birds chirping, feeling the sun on our face, all these things that I was talking about before where it's just a matter of you actually thinking that in your mind wherever you are. If you're at work, if you're in your house, it doesn't matter. Close your eyes and open your mind to maybe a place where you were on vacation before and go there for 15 minutes. Smell the smells. Feel what the sand feels like on your feet. Feel yourself plunging into the ocean. So, the antidote to anxiety, it's all about clearing your mind. However you choose to do that, make sure you're spending time every single day. Whether it's 15, 20 minutes, whether it's an hour, two hours, if you're working out at the gym, whether you're doing yoga, whether you're going to cycling class, whatever, take time to allow your mind separation from the stresses of your day.
Golden nugget number three: expect the best. If you expect to fail, you will fail. On the other hand, if you expect to win, you will win. So, what seeds are you planting in your mind? Are you planting seeds of positivity or seeds of negativity? Guess what? Your life is going to give you back more of that. Are you planting seeds of oh doubt and oh, I'm not going to make this work or something bad is going to happen? If you're planting seeds of that, guess what? You're going to get more of that. Start focusing on the positive. Start focusing on how things can go right. And guess what? When things go wrong, say, "hm, there's a lesson in that for me." Because life doesn't happen to me, it happens for me. So everything that's happening is there to teach me a lesson. This isn't a setback, it's a setup. Thing that's really bad, it happened for a reason. I'm going to learn from it and I'm going to get better.
Golden nugget number four: worry not. And he's right because doctors and psychologists, both alike, they agree that worrying actually does shorten your life and it does damage your body. We need to clear our thinking before we go to sleep. And we need to imagine our worries flowing out of our body like water out of a glass. So don't think that my path is the right path. No, no. This path is good for me. I replaced worry with hope by putting together goals. I put together three goals: a financial-related goal, a health-related goal, and a professional-related goal. Something that, what, what I was going to do with my life. And back in the day when I was going through those stresses, I was worrying a lot. A lot. I was having a tough time sleeping. I was having chest pains. My heart was palpitating all the time. And I really just could not get, you know, a high level of satisfaction in life. And you know, if you were saying on a scale of 1 to 8, Ryan, again, nines and tens are reserved for very special times in our lives that seldom happen. I was sitting at a four consistently where I would wake up and I'd all of a sudden feel the stresses of the day. I would pass between 3 and 4 all the time. So what I did was to replace that worry, that anxiety, that fear, I built myself a plan that gave me hope, goals that gave me hope, something that got me excited, something that I wanted to work towards, something I wanted to achieve because I knew that if I did, it would get me out of this mess and my life would be better as a result.
Golden nugget number five: problem solving. I had problems that I needed solutions to. I had desires. I had wants. I had dreams. I had goals that I needed a solution to. The Cut the Crap Show was a solution. Create Your Eight was a solution. But what I did need to do was take myself out of the busyness of the day and allow my mind to sort of free up and look for inspiration all around me and know that whatever solution I'm looking for, it's going to come to me. And this is where in this golden nugget in the book where Peale talks about, you know, problem solving, he gives us 10 problem-solving techniques, which many of them I believe—with the first one, believe that for every problem there is a solution. So yes, believe that your problem can be solved. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, you don't have a solution right now, but there is a solution, and often times there's more than one. Two, try to maintain your serenity as you address a problem. Don't feel anxious. Don't try to, don't try to get angry and say, "Ah, you know, I'm not getting this. I don't understand." No, you need to be calm. You need to be hopeful that there's going to be a solution to this problem. Number three, don't try to force an answer. Don't try to say like, "Oh my god, I need an answer by Saturday at noon. If I don't get it by Saturday at noon, then it's too late." Sometimes you can't force it. Life often happens for you. And so, you just need time for that to reveal itself to you. Number four, gather all relevant information. Pretty simple. Do as much research as possible. Number five, write down all facts about the situation. Again, get understanding for the problem. What's going on? You need to get clarity on the problem so you can get clear on what solutions you need to solve it. Number six, spend time praying about the issue you are confronting. Listen, if you're praying about it, that's fine. If you're not
Praying about it, maybe you're thinking about it. Always make time to think about it.
When you're walking in nature, yes, take time to think in nature and allow your mind to flow. But when you separate yourself from the stresses, the anxieties, the busyness of the day, allow your time to think about solutions.
Number seven, believe in and seek God's guidance on the promise of the 73rd Psalm. Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel. Um, if again, if you believe in the religious aspect of that, that will talk to you. That necessarily doesn't talk to me. Um, so I I maybe won't be using that one.
Eight, rely on your inner gifts of insight and intuition. There's things that we believe we should do and then there's things that we know we should be doing. So, you got to listen to yourself. And it takes time. It takes it does take time. It takes patience. It takes some maturity for you to realize what you're great at. And sometimes you're doing something just to make a living, just because it's my job. It's my career. It's what I believe I'm great at. But you have other gifts within you that maybe you're not exploring yet that you should be.
Number nine, attend religious services where you can and listen peacefully and let your subconscious work on the problem. And you can go to church or you can just go for walks. I love going for walks. Period. I'll put music on my ears and allow myself to think. Pretty simple.
Pretend the answer that develops in your mind or comes to pass is the right answer. So I just allowed the thoughts that came in my mind. Whenever I had a thought, an inspired thought, I wrote it down on my phone. Pulled out my phone, opened up the notepad, and just wrote it down. At the end of the day, I would think about it, ponder on it, and say, "You know what? This idea is something I want to go further into." And dig deeper into that. That's exactly how this show happened. That's exactly how Create Your Aid happened. That's exactly how you're going to find solutions to your problems.
Last but not least, golden nugget number six: How to handle heartache. Now, everybody at some point in their life experiences heartache, and it's tough. And so Peele says that for us to get over heartache, we need to resist the heartache by staying busy. So if you're getting a divorce from your husband or your wife, if you just broke up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, if you just lost a loved one, if a loved one passed away, a friend, a family member, doesn't matter who it is, he says that in order for you to get through it, you need to stay busy. You need to return to your normal activities as soon as possible after a loss or a defeat. And you need to resist the temptation to brood and feel sorry for yourself. I got to get back to work. I got to get back to my goals. Get back in the gym. Get back to eating right. Get back to hanging out with my friends, my family, listen to the music that I was listening to. We have to return to life. But sometimes we just have to be sad and we have to work our way through it. But the key here is to not allow your mind to dwell on it for too long. That's not handling heartache. That's allowing heartache to take control of you and to win. [Music]