The single most determining factor
of the quality of your life is predicated upon
your mindset.
The easiest this thing I do every year, ladies and gentlemen
is earn millions of dollars.
That's the easy part.
Speaking to corporations.
That was easy to do.
Let me tell you what it took me years to do was to believe
that I could do it.
That's the biggest thing that you will have to overcome.
I would go see these various speakers and I would sit back
and watch them.
And I would start going to the car, I'd be fired
up.
I said, I could do.
My mind then would say "les Brown, you can't do that."
"You don't have a college education."
"Les Brown, you can't do that."
"You've never worked for a major corporation."
"Les Brown, you can't do that."
"You have never" "had any experience doing things like this
before."
"You don't know the right people."
"You don't have the complexion of connection."
"Why would someone hire you?"
"Why would someone hire you" "to teach them"
"and to motivate them" "to do something"
"that you have never done?"
"Be practical."
"Be realistic."
"Be logical."
"It can't be done."
"You have no credentials."
And so based upon that I didn't even attempt
to do it.
I held myself back.
Maya Angelou said that most people go so far in life
and then they park.
They take some hits they have some failures
they have some disappointments and they stop dead in their tracks.
I went through a divorce from someone that I loved very much.
I was embarrassed, boom.
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer I was hurt, boom.
My best friend was diagnosed with cancer of the liver
boom, I took a hit.
I was diagnosed nine years ago with prostate cancer
and given two to three years to live boom, I took a hit,
I parked.
I took so many hits perhaps that's what Bigger Thomas said
the impulse to dream has been slowly beaten out of me
through the experiences of life.
I wasn't even dreaming anymore.
I didn't even know where I was.
You'll think this is it for you.
And other people will think you're done too.
They'll be telling you to give up.
And people you thought that would support you
will turn against you.
They'll criticize you.
They'll tear you down.
Your life will be full of darkness.
And you won't see a way out.
But when you're down in that hole I want you to remember something.
The only person who can save you is you.
Your job in this moment is to muster up enough strength
to push yourself back out of your negative pattern of thinking
and into the arena of life once again.
If you spend 30 minutes thinking about the fact you can't do something
I need you to spend an hour dreaming about the fact that you can.
What's the worst thing that can happen if I decide
to take a chance on me?
People laugh at me?
I lose all my money?
So?
I can come back again.
See, my wealth is not determined based upon what I have
my wealth is determined based upon who I am.
That's why I want you to increase your goals dramatically.
And I don't want you to ask yourself how you're going to do it.
How it's none of your business.
There's a reason we are told to walk by faith and not by sight.
There's a reason we were told to call forth those things that be not
as though they were.
You have power in you that you don't even know.
You want to develop an ongoing strategy.
A plan of action of self empowerment.
So you've got to listen to music and speeches that can uplift you.
Read books to strengthen your thoughts.
Watch movies that fire you up.
Because you're going to constantly have low moments
where you won't want to keep going.
You'll want to just fall apart.
So you've got to control what you let in your mind
and reprogram it with positivity.
If you don't program your mind life will program you.
Monitor yourself talk and realize that you're more than able.
You were born for this.
That you have the power within you to live your dream.
And as you read and feed your mind
with the pictures and the dreams and the words that empower you
it does something to you it stimulates you
it inspires you.
And you say, hey I can do it too.
And you find yourself being competent.
Let that drive you to make sure you do your homework
to work hard at developing technical mastery.
Of covering all of your bases.
So that whatever comes you can handle it.
If you listen to what everybody else is saying if you judge according to appearances
then you will find yourself constantly being negative.
But you want to go to the other end of the spectrum.
You want to know some way, somehow
things are going to get better.
How?
I don't know.
And I don't have to know.
I just have to have faith and believe
that everything's going to be all right.
All I need to do is to know it.
To expect it.
And to keep on doing what I can where I am
with what I've got right now.
Start planning and preparing for what it is that you want
because you expect to get it.
If you want to come out here and reach your goals
and make your dreams come true you don't want
to do it by dragging and doing it casually.
No.
You want to begin to put out more energy and more effort than ever before.
You've got to become unstoppable.
Because there'll be many things to turn you around.
You've got to think constantly on why you're doing it.
What are the rewards?
What's there for you across the goal line?
What are the things that will make it worth it for you?
My life is worthwhile.
Doesn't matter what I've experienced
doesn't matter about what I don't have.
Doesn't matter about what I've gone through.
What's important is that where I am right now
that
I live life and I experienced my life
fully.
And you owe it to yourself.
So when
you get up in the morning that you can look yourself in the face and
say, hey I'm living my life on my terms.