The most important thing is your mind.
Make no mistake about that right now
the only thing that is holding you back,
I promise you, and whatever excuse you're telling yourself,
it's b*****
The only thing that's holding you back
is the way that you think about yourself and the world.
That's it.
Flat.
You have not built the mechanisms in your mind
that you need to free yourself from the Matrix.
And boys and girls, the Matrix has you.
Who knows David Foster Wallace?
This is water.
In the Talk,
what he makes clear is the fish
is the last one to realize that it's in water.
Think about it from a human perspective.
We had to discover air, we had to discover gravity.
They're so ubiquitous.
You literally don't see them.
You take them for granted as just being there,
and that's how people take their belief system.
Right now, you think you're capable of certain things
and incapable of others, and that is your water.
As you think so shall you be.
Seven little words
that I think are perhaps the most important things
that we can learn and master in our lives.
This old proverb notion
that I become what I think about all day long.
And once you know
that what you think about is what expand.
You start getting real careful about what you think about.
You don't allow your thoughts to be on anything
that you don't want.
Or that you wouldn't want
to have manifest or show up for you in your life.
It's what goes on between this ear and this ear,
and in our hearts
that determine our lives out there.
There's no, there's no world out there
except what's going on here.
So the people that say,
I can't afford it, I can't do this, I can't get to college, the rich evil,
I choose not to participate that.
And that's one thing people
could change today?
Correct.
Right now is that dialogue in their head.
Stop saying the word can't.
I can't.
Right.
So how can I.
How can I,
especially as in I can't afford it.
How can I afford that?
Because that opens them up to looking at it
as an investment to a greater future.
Right.
Well, the simple part that most people don't understand
is that every thought we think,
and every word we speak is creating our future.
It's as though our thoughts go out into the universe
and are accepted and brought back to us as experience.
Now that is a very simple thing,
but most people don't get it.
They don't understand it.
They've never heard it before,
and they think it's ridiculous.
But if you can really accept the fact
that every time you think a thought
and every time you speak a word,
you are literally painting your future,
making your dinner, whatever you wanna call it,
you are creating and you're creating your own life.
And this is simple, but it's not easy to accept.
But once you accept it, then you can start
deliberately creating what you want in your life.
And you begin to be aware
of what you don't want in your life
and how you are contributing to it.
You've gotta ask yourself, what's your why?
What motivates you?
What pushes you?
What drives you?
And if that thing is internal,
if nobody has to call you, if nobody has to prod you,
if nobody has to reward you,
if nobody has to give you anything,
if you are self-motivated
and self-regulated, you can have it.
You can be it.
You can do it.
The first thing you wanna think about is
switching from negativity to positivity.
So many people get caught up in focusing on what
they don't want to happen in their future,
but they start living almost in constant fear
of what could go wrong and what won't work out.
And when we come from this place of
well, I don't know if I put myself out there,
you know it's not gonna work out, and then I'm gonna get made fun of, gonna
and then people, I'm be embarrassed and then I'm gonna be stressed and no one's gonna love me.
And then we go in this rabbit hole and this kind of cycle of fear and anxiety,
and that is not how you attract good things in your life.
You can't start from your way of being of negativity and fear
and expect to attract beautiful things in your life.
So we, we need to eliminate the negative self-talk.
And an environment that's easy to get stuck
in sometimes can be the negative self-talk.
And there's so much negativity in the world.
And if you don't actively work to shift your focus,
to shift your thoughts and your mind that negativity will consume.
You have a choice you wanna spend your life
deciding what you want and what you don't want
and then chasing it outside,
or do you wanna sit there and work inside
to realize, all I really want is the joy and the love, and if I stay open I can have those.
I don't need outside conditions to keep me open.
So I make a very important point cuz in spirituality it gets mixed up.
Spirituality is not about renunciation.
There is no renunciation.
Renunciation says, I've decided what it is that
will make me happy, and I'm not gonna do it.
Well, I, that sounds rather absurd, right?
Spirituality says, it was stupid of me to decide what will make me happy
instead of being happy with life,
instead of being grateful and turned on
by all of the amazing things that are happening in front of me.
And all the past experiences I got to have,
why don't I just enjoy all that
and then come into life filled with love, filled with joy,
and give the whole of my being to the moments that are unfolding in front of me?
That's what spirituality says.
So it's not about annunciation,
it's not about things are wrong and things are right.
It's about understanding that you did this.
You did this with your mind.
You set up conditions in which your mind would open, and then your heart opens
and conditions in which your mind would close and your heart closes.
So basically, you come to the point where you have to decide.
Do I want to continue letting my past leave impressions on my mind and my heart,
such that only certain things will open and close me,
and then I will spend my life chasing after
manipulating, controlling, conniving, whatever you want.
The world around me so that sometimes it unfolds the way I want.
Or do you wanna sit there and understand
that you are the one who's making these decisions?
It's your mind who's setting up the conditions.
Why don't you just not do that?
Create habits of empowering yourself because empowering yourself,
forgiving yourself, supporting yourself
as you move forward and do the work to change your life.
That's how you break the habit of victimizing yourself,
and that's how you learn to do the opposite, which is supporting,
empowering, cheering, celebrating yourself as you move forward.
That's what's gonna motivate you to do the action.
And look, if Chris and I can go from having
liens on this house six years ago, I.
To literally building an extraordinary business, changing our
marriage to the point where we are building our dream house.
A house that's so nice.
I can't even believe we are gonna live in this house.
Because of the hard work that we've done.
But I'll tell you the singular habit that helped us do it
is we stopped victimizing ourselves.
We stopped labeling ourselves.
We started beating, we stopped beating the **** out of ourselves,
and we broke that habit.
We changed the narrative by learning how to empower ourselves.
The starting point of taking full control over your conscious and your subconscious mind
is for you to accept complete responsibility for everything that you think, say, and do.
You are responsible for whatever happens to you,
and especially you are responsible for your responses to the inevitable ups and downs of daily life.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
I used to think that setting goals and making plans was the starting point of success in life.
After a while, I changed my mind because I realized that something else actually comes first.
What comes first is the acceptance of complete responsibility for yourself
and for everything that happens to you.
Real maturity begins when you finally realize that no-one is coming to the rescue.
It is only when you accept total responsibility for your life situation,
with no excuses and no blaming of others,
that you move into a mental position to kick the long ball in your own life.
It is only when you have accepted 100 percent responsibility for yourself
that you are ready to take the next step
and decide exactly what it is you want and exactly what it is you want to do.
Accepting responsibility is not an option that is open to the individual.
It is mandatory.
It is an absolute fact of human existence.
You do not have the luxury of blaming others or making excuses for parts of your life that are not satisfactory.
As Henry Ford II said, “Never complain, never explain.”
No one makes you do anything or feel anything.
You are where you are and what you are because you have decided to be there.
Everything that you are or ever will be is entirely up to you.
If there is any effect in your life that you’re not happy about,
it is solely up to you to change the causes. You are completely responsible.
You are completely responsible.
When something negative or unexpected happens to you, immediately seize the moment
as an opportunity to demonstrate calmness and self-control.
Make it a game.
Instead of allowing yourself to feel negative,
deliberately force yourself to substitute something positive.
Here is an affirmation that has been very helpful to me.
I repeat it over and over until it becomes automatic,
in almost every situation.
When something goes wrong, I immediately catch myself by saying,
“Every situation is a positive situation if viewed as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.”
Whatever it is, I take a deep breath, relax, smile, and say,
“Every situation is a positive situation
if viewed as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.”
I then look within the situation for something that I can learn that will help me to grow
and develop greater self-mastery.
This is a simple “mind game” that enables me to stay relaxed and in control of my emotions.
It will work for you as well.
Just give it a try.