- I was a 19-year-old kid, and I was miserable.
I was in love with my high school sweetheart.
We were that couple that was really annoying.
We went to school together, we signed up for classes
together, we shared a Uhaul on the way to school together.
We lived in the same dorm together.
We walked to class, we walked to breakfast
in the morning, and walked to class together.
We were just joined at the hip,
and we were completely crazy, infatuated, in love.
Half way through the first year of college
she discovered beer and other boys
on the same night
and she cheated.
I completely fell apart.
I stopped going to class,
I barley ate anything, certainly nothing healthy.
I stopped studying, I just stopped caring about the world.
Literally couldn't get out of bed.
I never thought about it until years
later reading changed my life.
I was still reading, it was one thing that
has brought me through everything.
I happen to pick up the school newspaper,
and I opened it up and there was a full page ad.
It was this perfect white sandy beach,
turquoise water, big green palm tree.
Across the top of the ad it said escape. (laughing)
Students needed for summer time
jobs in the Dominican Republic.
So I escaped, I went down there.
One night my friend Kevin and I
hopped into a car after dropping off a client.
We're going down this road 85 miles an hour in this car.
The windows were open and that air was coming in.
That amazing humid, if you've been in the Caribbean,
that just gorgeous, amazing humid air is coming in.
Then we came upon a corner.
We take that corner 85 miles an hour.
That corner became the turning
point that put my feet on this state for you today.
Kevin grabs the wheel, he goes,
"Hold on!" And I brace.
The car starts sliding sideways,
and that weird slow motion thing happens.
Kevin's gripping the wheel trying to make the corner,
and all of a sudden smack!
When I came too I looked over and Kevin
is screaming at the top of his lungs,
"Get out of the car Brendon, get out the car!"
I look over and a whole big chunk of his head is open.
So, I pull myself out of the windshield
of this car and he's screaming over here.
I stand up eventually on the hood of the car.
I look and I notice all this blood on me.
I remember just looking down and that slow motion
things happening, I just thought,
"Did I even matter?"
I start seeing all these images of my life
when I'm surrounded by people that I care for.
There's a cake in front of me.
Here's my friends singing, my mom
leading them in that goofy song.
There's my sister just swinging
and smiling right next to me.
It makes you wonder, did I love?
Did I love openly?
And honestly?
And completely?
Or did I hold back cause that one time I got hurt?
Just as I was about to pass out I
notice a glint, like a sparkle, something shiny,
a reflection in the blood going off the hood of the car.
It made me look up.
There was this bright, big, beautiful moon that night.
I just immediately felt this connection.
Like I knew I was going to be okay.
I felt like the big guy upstairs reached down
to me and handed me life's golden ticket.
He reached down and said, "Here ya go kid,
"you're still alive, you can still love and matter,
"but now you know the clock is ticking."
Mortality, motivation.
I got it as a 19 year old kid.
People say why are you so successful?
I'm like, I got mortality motivation when I was 19.
That's a blessing.
Most people don't get that until their 60.
Don't worry, Kevin and I, we both survived.
See I'm still here, hee, it's okay. I made it!
But, the one thing that I took away from that
entire thing was that moment and those questions.
Cause I remembered them, and I thought about them.
As I was healing, I was like, what was that about?
Why did I feel so unhappy with that moment?
I thought in the last moments of life
there must be this transcendence and I was not happy.
I realized it was because of how I'd been living my life,
and I wasn't living to my questions.
I knew I got those questions.
Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?
And soon as I got that those were the questions,
I'm gonna evaluate my self with at the end of a life
it gave me the power of what my
late mentor Wayne Dyer taught.
The power of intention.
That breath you just took, feel it.
(deep breath)
What a blessing that is you got that life.
What a blessing it is you got that breath.
That means you still got something inside.
You gotta work for it, you gotta contribute for it,
you gotta give for it, you gotta lead for it,
you gotta love for it, because you still
have something not just in you.
You're still here for a reason,
and now you just gotta earn that blessing.