There are many people
who have
the limitations in their minds
who have lost that fire
in their eyes
you aren't given any breaks in life.
You make them for yourself.
We are all being tested in life
and how you face that test
determines the rest of your life.
And there's a lot of times
where I don't know how
I'm gonna move forward
but I ask myself one question
can you take
another step?
And that answer
is always
yes.
Wherever focus goes, energy
flows.
So why don't we tap into that power now
for your business and life?
A part of beginning to get unstuck
you've got to decide
that the behavior pattern that you have adopted
doesn't work for you.
You gotta change your strategies
and changing your strategy means
reinventing your life.
Recreating you
and you have the power to do that.
You wanna take responsibility for your life.
You can decide that you're going to change
that you're not gonna be a wimp.
I got me here
I can get me out of this.
And I'm getting out.
It's not easy reaching your dreams.
It's not easy to achieve a happy and fulfilled life.
It's not easy getting up every day
fighting
going through the daily struggles
getting rejected constantly
getting laughed at all the time
going through trials and tribulations
facing the pain of defeat
over and over again.
It is not easy.
But if you do it
it is worth it.
See, if people ask you how you're doing,
even if you're having some difficult times,
say, I'm blessed
and highly favored.
Because anytime you wake up
and you don't have a white chalk outline around your body,
it's a great day.
You gotta tell yourself that no matter what
no matter what gets in my way
I'm gonna keep going.
I'm gonna keep moving.
I'm gonna keep winning.
I'm gonna keep surviving.
It's everything that you want because
you went through that pain of that journey,
that felt like he wanted to just knock you down
and say, "You know what?
You can't do it."
Understand that there's gonna be
trial and tribulations.
They will have storm
but they will have sunshine after the rain.
But that depends on you,
and how bad do you truly want it?
Nothing in life will hold you back
if you trust in yourself
and you trust in the process.
And at the end of this race guys,
you're gonna be more capable.
Through that effort,
builds the character of the person
you want to be at the end.
Accept that.
And so I say to you,
it's possible you can live your dream.
If it's becoming a diamond,
if it's having more,
it's an achieving more,
it's possible you can live your dream.
It's necessary that you have a plan of action,
that you are resilient,
that you stick to,
that you have the vision and never give up,
that you become creative and relentless
and keep on coming back
again and again and again,
and that it's you,
that you gotta take personal responsibility
to make it happen.
And when life knocks you down,
jump back up and say
it's not over
until I win.
What does success look like?
What does it take?
Human being has come with such open sense of possibilities,
those who are committed to being successful with whatever they're doing,
one important aspect of their life is,
that is what get you across so many lines in our life,
so many barriers in our life.
This happened in your school, maybe later in your university, later in your work, it's happening to people,
maybe not everyone but to a whole lot of people.
Their commitment to success is weak.
They want to succeed;
they will take three steps, then something little interesting happens here,
they will go away here, they will go away there, they'll go away there,
“Hey, I want to live."
Their commitment to success is weak.
Either situations around them in some way, you know,
situations can impede you from doing what you're doing very easily,
many times it happens to everyone.
But when this happens, people weaken their commitment for their success.
Maybe physically they'll feel little weak – they will weaken their commitment to success.
Maybe their emotions slosh around a little bit –
– they will weaken their commitment to success.
So our commitment to success should not weaken
because there is social drama going on or physiological drama or psychological drama,
whatever happens, your commitment to success should not weaken.
That is what get you across so many lines in our life, so many barriers in our life.
So, what does success look like? What does it take?
You know, those who have been very successful
either in music, sport, art, business, spiritual process, doesn't matter what,
those people never know when they ate, when they slept, when they got afternoon rest.
I have not seen such a thing in my life.
So, those who are committed to being successful with whatever they're doing,
one important aspect of their life is, they're not settling down wherever it's a bit comfortable.
Because comfort will happen when they lower you to in the grave, very comfortable you are, you know.
Have you seen how comfortable they are?
Once they're dead if you throw them there also, they're comfortable;
if you lower them, they're comfortable,
Right now, it's about ensuring that there is profoundness of experience
and there is impactfulness of activity.
Because if they had given you a limitless amount of time, you could do all those things, nothing wrong.
I'm not against them.
But they gave you such a little time with such tremendous potential of being human, that's the problem.
If creation had made you like an earthworm, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with an earthworm.
It is just that it's a unipolar potential, it can only do that much.
An earthworm is not thinking of climbing a tree because it knows it'll be picked up by the birds.
It never has such aspirations. It just wants to recycle the earth.
You know, it is beneficial to so many other lives, including us,
but its objective is very clear, to eat and to reproduce and to die, very clear objectives. That purpose to fulfill he strives. I don't think he sleeps in the afternoon. I don't think so, because many afternoons I've seen earthworms, they were all vigorously active. But a human being came with too many potentials. Because of that, it needs a certain level of striving for a human being to... forget about the world, to consider yourself successful.
but its objective is very clear, to eat and to reproduce and to die, very clear objectives.
That purpose to fulfill he strives.
I don't think he sleeps in the afternoon.
I don't think so, because many afternoons I've seen earthworms, they were all vigorously active.
But a human being came with too many potentials.
Because of that, it needs a certain level of striving for a human being to...
forget about the world, to consider yourself successful.
If your idea of success is, you're doing little better than your neighbor, I call that sickness, that is not success.
You are happy that your neighbor is worse than you. Is this sickness or success?
It is sickness.
But in some way, you feel fulfilled with what you're doing.
Let's consider that as success for now.
It doesn't matter whether you're better than somebody or worse than somebody,
that question should not even come up in your mind.
But in some way, you feel you're using yourself fully and there’s a certain sense of fulfillment in your activity.
Well, if you're capable of just closing your eyes and simply sitting without any activity, that's fantastic.
But you cannot do that. You cannot do that right now.
In the states that you are,
you can't simply close your eyes and become still.
Instead of being busy, you will become preoccupied.
That doesn't mean you're improving, that means you're regressing in some way.
The problem about this success is, people always making judgments,
“I did this, I did that, maybe this didn't work, maybe this is a mistake, that's a mistake.”
There's no such thing in life.
See, at one time, you were a monkey, all right? Hey, this is not me, this is that Englishman, you know.
Charles Darwin said you were all monkeys.
At one time, you were a monkey just a brief while ago.
Was it a mistake that you committed that you were a monkey?
Or was it just a certain stage of evolution?
Was it a mistake or was it just a certain stage of evolution?
Similarly, since you were born because as a human being,
you're born largely unformed, unlike other creatures.
Other creatures if they're just… their food is taken care of, they know what to do with their life.
Because human being has come with such open sense of possibilities,
you come unformed, you don't come fixed. You have to fix yourself.
Different people throw different types of balls at you.
From all over, your parents, your teachers,
the school, the neighbors and the society and the world throws all kinds of things at you.
To gather all this muck and make something worthwhile out of yourself is your business.
That's your success.
It doesn't matter whether somebody thinks you're worthwhile or not,
you feel you are a worthwhile life.
Good enough for now.
World may not recognize, it doesn't matter.
But, you know, you are worthwhile.
It's hard to say what the soul means meta physically,
because, you know, beyond the confines
of a single human being.
We do have this sense that the soul can
expand itself into something that's
greater than, well, greater than it has been.
It has this capacity for growth, and we do have the sense that
the soul can expand itself to the point where it, it's
enlightened, for lack of a better word, that it's working
As efficiently as possible to transform everything that's
unnecessarily painful and malevolent about the world
into what's positive and good, and,
and, and that it does that as a consequence of
confronting the world with courage and truth.
And I, I think that's right, and I do think that that
means that the soul participates in something internal,
which is the attempt of being itself to transform what's
Unnecessarily painful and malevolent into what's good,
and that human beings actually do participate in that.
And that that's part of the reason that our ancient
tradition insists that we're made in the image of God.
And I think that it's a mistake to underestimate
the importance of that because I don't think that
you can live life, a life of sufficient profundity
To protect yourself from being corrupted by suffering
malevolence without adopting a responsibility
that's commensurate with that set of ideas.
I think that you either orient yourself upward,
you know, to the star above the horizon, and try
desperately to improve the structure of being.
Or you work at counter purposes to it and make things worse
I don't think there's a middle ground.
in fact, to the degree there is a middle ground,
it tilts towards the negative because people who try
to occupy the middle ground, um, try to
generally try to accrue the benefit, let's say, without adopting any
of the risk, and that's not acceptable, not helpful.
So that's a soul to me.