It's time to get real.
It's time to get raw.
It's time to look ourselves in the mirror
and come to the resolve that this version of ourself
is not going to carry us in the stretch.
I've been this version of myself long enough
that if I don't change,
if I don't do something about this,
then I'm gonna find myself bankrupt.
Having that faith, that vulnerability
to just see things that are hard to see.
Gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable.
So can you handle the truth?
There's a questions and if you can't,
then you, if you see that,
then you can say, well, if I'm gonna change,
I'm gonna have to figure out
how to deal with that discomfort
until the point that I can see what I need to see,
then I can change it.
So as the persistence of continuing to do something
until you can do it.
Can't is not an option.
It's either I will or I won't,
I can, I know I can,
but I will, or I won't, you know?
And that's the thing.
And in some cases you may try your hardest
and you just don't win
or youdon't pass a test or you don't succeed.
That's part of life.
Understanding it's gonna take
hard work discipline and learning how to work
with other people in order to get to the next level.
There's not other people that aren't holding you back,
your boss isn't holding you back,
your parents, aren't holding you back
those are excuses.
To me there's no such thing as luck.
Okay.
All luck is preparation,
meeting opportunity, plain and simple.
Once I realized that I could get better at anything,
it dawned on me
that how I spend my time is a spiritual consideration.
And I didn't want to die with potential
that I failed to turn into skillset.
That to me, that speaks to me.
How much of my potential can I actually
turn into skillset and get good at this stuff
and push and grow and improve?
Like that to me is just this incredibly intoxicating loop.
And waking up every morning with a desire to adapt
with the desire to change.
Stand out today, be different,
become something different.
Stop lying to yourself and stand up
and become something with worth,
something with more than you've ever been.
Your goals, your goals that you set for yourself
that's your power.
Your ambition is your power.
It's about how hard you can get hit
and keep moving forward.
How much you can take and keep moving forward.
You have to electrify
and get all the things that are necessary within you
to start doing the things that you need to do.
So when the time comes, you can kick down that door
and move towards the possibilities
of being the best of who you really are.
Learning how to concentrate
learning how to focus in,
deciding that you aregoing to focus to develop your skills.
You'll be surprised of the ideas that will come to you
of the people that you'll be able to attract,
of the opportunities that you'll be able to see.
You begin to see things that have been
staying there, looking you in the face and say
I can't believe this has been here all this time.
There are so many people in the world and you know,
you may be watching this right now,
and you have these incredible ideas and what you think is missing is motivation.
And that's not true because the way that our minds are wired
and the fact about human beings is that we
are not designed to do things that are uncomfortable or scary or difficult.
Our brains are designed to protect us from those things
cuz our brains are trying to keep us alive.
And in order to change, in order to build a business,
in order to be the best parent, the best spouse, to do all those things
that you know you wanna do with your life, with your work, with your dreams,
you're gonna have to do things that are difficult,
uncertain, or scary, which sets up this problem for all of us.
You're never gonna feel like it.
Why is it so hard
to do the little things that would improve my life?
Waking up and realizing that I'm never gonna feel like doing the things
that are tough or difficult or uncertain, or scary or new.
So I need to stop waiting until I feel like it.
And number two, I am one decision away from a totally different marriage,
a totally different life, a totally different job, a totally different income.
Whatever you don't use, you lose.
Lack of use causes loss on this planet.
Maybe not the next one, but on this one.
if you tie your arm to your body, leave it there long enough, you'll never use it again.
It's over for the arm.
Now, it may not be over, but it's over for the arm.
The only way to keep the use of this arm is what?
Keep using it.
If you quit, you lose automatically.
They don't bring it up for a vote.
You lose automatically when you quit.
Now, the same thing that goes for your arm, goes for your brain mentality.
The same thing goes for all the human virtues.
Ambition, unused, declines.
Strong feelings
unused, diminished.
It doesn't grow.
It diminishes.
Faith, unused, decreases.
It's a law.
Vitality unused diminishes.
Energy
unused, decreases.
The guy says, well, I'm gonna save up my energy.
You can't do that.
That's like trying to save today put it on the end of the year.
See, you can't do that.
They'll come take you away.
if you don't use today. What?
It's lost.
The guy says, well, I'll work twice as hard tomorrow to make up for it.
See, that's foolish.
You could have done that anyway.
Today, unused is lost.
A talent, unused is lost, and ability, unused is lost.
So here's one of the key expressions of the evening.
Take a new inventory of your self.
Starting tomorrow new project.
Take a new inventory and make sure that all of your talent and ability,
and mentality, and ingenuity and vitality and strong feelings.
Faith, courage.
Make sure that all you've got's being used, otherwise you lose.
Resolve to focus on the solution and what can be done now
rather than on what happened and who's to blame.
Think in terms of the actions you can take to resolve the situation
rather than what went wrong and who is to blame.
To remain optimistic, look for the good in every situation.
When you look for something good, you will always find something good.
Furthermore, while you’re looking for something good,
because your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time,
you will automatically become positive, optimistic, and back in full control.
Seek the valuable lesson in every problem or difficulty.
Every setback you face contains one or more lessons that have been sent to you
to help you be more successful in the future.
The difference between successes and failures is simple:
Failures feel sorry for themselves when things go wrong,
whereas successful people look for the valuable lesson they can learn that will help them in the future.
Normal Vincent Peale used to say, “When God wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem.
The bigger the gift that God wants to send you, the bigger the problem he wraps it up in.”
Instead of concentrating on the problem, look for the gift.
Wonderfully enough, you will always find it.
What’s more, sometimes the gift, or valuable lesson, can be of far greater value than the cost of the problem itself.
Sometimes, one lesson that you learn in dealing with a problem can be the key to your long-term success.
As Napoleon Hill wrote,
“Within every problem or obstacle lays the seed of an equal or greater opportunity or benefit.
Your job is to find it.” Continually think of yourself as a strong, powerful, resolute person in the face of adversity.
In World War I, a British general was described by his superiors:
“There he stands, like an iron peg, driven into the frozen ground, immovable.”
Let this be an accurate description of you whenever you face difficulties or problems of any kind.
Resolve to stand like an iron peg driven into the frozen ground.
When you resolve in advance that you will never give up, your success is virtually guaranteed.
In the final analysis, nothing can really stop you but yourself.
In life, it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down.
All that matters is how many times you get back up.
If you continue to get back up and press onward, you must eventually reach your goal.
Each time you exert your self-discipline to persist in the face of adversity,
you also increase your self-esteem and self-confidence.
Then, as your self-esteem increases, you feel stronger, more powerful, and more unstoppable.
When you feel better and stronger, you become more capable
of persisting the next time—and then the time after that.
By disciplining yourself to persist in the face of all adversity, you put your life
onto an upward spiral of self-esteem, self-discipline,
and persistence until you eventually become like a force of nature.
I think the best way to prove your your value is to work,
is to learn, is to absorb, to be a sponge.
Right, but you always wanna outwork your potential.
You know, as hard as you believe you can work,
you can work harder than that.
And that's what I tried to do when I first came in the league.
But you know, basketball is such a direct competition sport.
And me coming in at 17, I hated when like my teammates would say,
you know, I get hit with an elbow, right?
Shaq would hit me with an elbow in practice.
I always had that extra chip on my shoulder.
So like every day in practice for me was really trying to
annihilate everybody that was, that I was playing against.
I wanted to prove, you don't need to babysit me.
And so it's always that competitive nature, the work ethic and curiosity.
My philosophy was a very simple one.
You know, Rudy was one of my favorite films growing up.
After watching that film, I come to understand if I could work that hard.
What would my career be?
And I made a promise to myself from that day
that I was gonna work that hard every single day so that when I do retire, I have no regrets.
And that was the most important thing for me,
is to eave no stone unturned, get better every single day.
And if I lived that way, then over time,
you know, I'd have something that was beautiful.
But that was my philosophy.
It seems like a pretty simple one, but
you know, if you live your life to just get better every single day
and do that for 20 years, I mean, what do you have?