Watch This Every Day - Motivational Speech by T.D. Jakes | One of The Best Motivational Video Ever

What is something you'd suggest to add to our daily routine to empower ourselves? Quiet. Quiet. We're too busy. We are so busy that we don't notice that we're not productive. Busy does not mean that you are producing. We are just spinning our wheels. And the great thinking and progress that we've made in this country, steam engines, telephones, automobiles, all types of things, spacecrafts, were done by people who had moments to think. We're moving so fast at breakneck speed. And if we get a free moment, we're on Twitter and Facebook and everything. It's the death of creativity. And I would challenge people to go back to meditation. And if you're spiritual, go back to prayer. If you're not, just go back to laying still for a moment to clear your head, to hit the reset button. Because we are starting every day with the burdens from yesterday assaulting us in today. Let's put a comma between all of that. Shut it all down. And you'd be surprised what you can hear when you shut up. Too many times we have put so much focus on teaching you to be good seed that we haven't taught you the power of good soil. And so when we come to soil issues, the seed ignores the soil. We flick the channel. That has nothing to do with me. We close our eyes because we have been taught to be good seed, but we have not been taught to pay attention to soil. And yet the Bible is clear. Jesus says, some fell by the wayside, some fell amongst rocks, some fell amongst thorns. The whole text is about environment. Look at you and look at your environment. Have you been positioned to flourish? Positioning has a lot to do with flourishing. To be in an environment, in a family that supports you. My sister and I were talking the other day. I was telling her what an amazing person she is. That all of our lives together and all the things that God did in my life, not once in all of the years that I've known her and she was there when mama had me, have I ever known her to be jealous of me? Not once, not ever. She has always been my cheerleader and my greatest fan. And she said, how could I be jealous of you? You're my brother. I said, a lot of people have siblings that hate them, that are jealous of them, that hope they choke. And some of my development has to be that God planted me in an environment of people that supported me. My brother, my sister, my mother, my father, they all supported me. You can have good seed, but if you've been in bad soil, people who hated you, environments that denied you, education that underserved you, communities that limited you, mentalities that poisoned you. Do you hear what I'm saying? If your soil wasn't right, it doesn't mean that you're not right, but if your soil wasn't right, it's going to affect how you root and how you grow. And you might grow a little bit. The Bible says you can grow for a while, but then the thorns will choke you out or the rocks will not have enough soil for your roots to grow. Are you blaming God for something you ought to be blaming the soil for? You cannot take a peach seed and plant it in a teaspoon of dirt and expect it to grow. Though the teaspoon of the dirt is the same size as the peach seed, it will not grow. The seed will only grow when it is planted in something bigger than itself. And I want to know where are you planted this morning? Are you planted in something bigger than you? Or have you always been planted in teacups, surrounded by little dirt, little resources, small minded people, narrow, limited places that never let you stretch to reach your capacity. Sometimes you got to go where the corn is. To be planted is destiny concealed. To have increase is destiny revealed. So when you plant a seed, you don't plant it as if the planting were the final destination. You plant it and you can't see it anymore. It's destiny is concealed in the hopes that ultimately it will become a stalk of corn or an apple tree or whatever it was you planted. And in between the destiny concealed and the destiny revealed is something we call watering. And I thought as dynamic as the text may be, to grapple with the notion of being planted and to grapple with the notion of having increase seems totally irrelevant if we don't stop by the station of watering. Because watering is the last step before increase. It is the transition point between what is concealed and what is revealed. And without the benefit of watering, the destiny will die in the ground, never reaching its potential simply because it has never been watered. And I thought I would ask you this morning, have you ever been watered? I'm reading somebody's mail right now. You cannot embrace what I'm about to teach if you don't understand that you have been planted. You didn't grow wild. You didn't just happen. You weren't just an afterthought. You didn't just come to be. You were planted. The sperm cell that created you out swam all of the millions of other cells before you had a Bible. Before you had a Bible, before you had a hymn book, you were already in a fight and that cell out swam all the rest because you have been planted. Well, I want to make the distinction about being planted because the act of planting can be confusing to the student who has not watched. Because planting looks no different from burial. In order to do either one of them, you got to do some digging. And once you dig down in the ground, both of them are concealed. But one of them has a destiny and the other one does not. You bury the dead to get rid of the body, but you plant a seed so that it can go through a transformation of coming back up greater than it was when it went down. Oh good God have mercy. That's so good I'm going to come over here and say it again. When you plant a seed, you're not burying it to get rid of it. You're planting it so that it can go through a metamorphosis and come back up better than it was when it went down. How many people in this room have come up better than you were? I'm better. I'm better. I'm better than it was when it went down. It was good for me that I've been afflicted. For had I not been afflicted, I would have never known the glory of God. I'm better for it. I didn't like it, but I'm better for it. I couldn't see down there, but I'm better for it. You see, I was planted in a dark place where my sight didn't work for me, but I'm better for it. Every time you go through something dark and you can't see your way out, remember you've been planted, not been buried, and when you come up, I'm coming up. I'm coming up. Write yourself a note. I have not been buried. I have been planted. I may be underground, but I'm not buried in this mess. I'm planted in it. I'm planted in it, and if I'm planted in it, expect me to come back up again. Making your relationships count because everything is about relationships. First of all, your relationship with God, that's a very important thing to have because as long as you know that there's somebody in charge, you don't have to bear the brunt of the responsibility and the weight of what's going on in your life. You can talk to the boss, okay? Number two, enjoy your relationship with yourself. If you don't like you, it makes it hard for me to like you because people, when you walk into their atmosphere, they draw you into the cosmos of their own drama, and if they're full of drama without you, when you come in, you become caught up in the cyclone of their drama. Enjoy your relationship with yourself, and then anybody else who comes in, they enter into a party you already started. You understand? Yeah, yeah. And then the relationship with your kids, the relationship with your spouse, the relationship with your friends, taking time to enjoy the relationships because there is no fruit. Nature teaches us that there is no fruit without relationships. You cannot be fruitful by yourself in business, in home, in life, in church. I don't care what it is. You are no more than the relationships you surround yourself with, and make sure that those are good ones.