JUST STOP GIVING UP FOR ONCE - Powerful Motivational Speech Video

One of my favorite quotes says, don't take directions from someone who's never been to where you're going. And we all do that. We all take someone's opinion and they've not even been there. They've never, they've never reached that or achieved that. And we're sitting here taking their word as gospel. So stop, stop giving up just because you don't see the results. This is like, so there's like for me personally, this is how I look at goals. The goal, the physical thing that the world will see is nothing more than the by-product of the internal version that the world will never see. So like I may have a goal on the outside, but it wasn't about the goal on the outside. It was about who I had to become. Who do you become along that journey? But if I give up, if I stop, I've just stopped my process of becoming this new version of me. Winning makes you different. It does make you different. And you know what different does? It scares people. Different scares people. It really, really does. People don't like different. They like to stay in the middle. They like to stay, they like to stay consistently the same because it's comfort. But you cannot care what people got to say, bro. Like, this is your dream. This is your passion. Go chase it. Go chase it and protect your dream, bro. Don't let anyone stop you from doing what you want to do. You can't let what people say deteriorate you, bro. They're going to talk anyway, bro. They're going to talk anyway. Forget them. Who cares, bro? Do you, bro. Make yourself happy, bro. You're not living for others, bro. So start. In order to train as hard as possible, you must repaint a clear image of your purpose. Once your goal is sharply but realistically defined, all that remains is carrying out your plan. What are you going to do? How bad do you want it? There's two options. They continue forward. Pushing upward. And if you do, that dream is giving birth. And forever, you will live in the reality of it. If you stop, quit, throw in the towel. I promise you, there's no distance you can travel far enough to find that dream again. For it is dead. And in its death, it's replaced by regret. Because you're sad, now you're going to make a bunch of bad decisions because you're sad. No, no, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. You're sad, okay. You get emotional sometimes, okay. Got it. Now, get control of your emotions and carry on with your life. Work like they're trying to take it from you because they are. If you're not working like someone is trying to take everything you've worked for, someone eventually will. They don't care that you're tired. They don't care how you feel. They don't care about your excuses. They don't care about your emotions. Complacency kills. You do not need them to believe in you. You do not need your friends to tell you you're great. All you have to do is go become great and they will recognize you. So we all have some stuff that we've been given. And I don't think that it's optional for us to sit on what we have. See, if you're sitting on what you have, what you've been given, I think everybody's been given something to bring to the planet. That only you can do that. Only you can perform that. Only you can initiate that activity. And if you don't do that, if you're not filling in your life with your light work or your mission, then there are gaps in your life. You forgot who the f*** you are, bro. You got so caught up in other people's opinions and the way the world looks at you that you forgot what got you here in the first place. Forget everybody else, bro. Forget the crowd. Forget the clubs. Forget whatever it is. You have nobody to prove anything to except yourself. In my philosophy, I'm a warrior and everything should be perfect. Everything what I'm doing, I have to do it well or I shouldn't do it at all. Sometimes a man who's not at peace is a man who was born to not fit in. But he's trying to shoehorn himself into a box or into a hole that he was never meant to fit in. And that might be you. Some of you are meant for the journey, not for the arrival. Embrace the journey and shun the box. And be one of those men who finds things, who figures things out, who sees things that others are not able to see. And what we do when we're not living out our true identity, we begin to fill the gaps. We fill the holes with garbage. If you give up a little bit today, you can't get it back. If you skip a workout today, there's no possible way to get that back. When you let something go, it's gone. And Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rome didn't fall apart in a day either. It didn't fall apart because of one thing. It falls apart just a little bit at a time. And so you can't, you know, you can't submit. You can't submit. Everything you do holds value. There are no shortcuts. You went to every f****** corner, made a left turn or a right turn, and then you went down the next path. Ensured everything and the opportunity was presented. And you got the most out of each situation you could. If you come up short, you know it's not from your lack of effort. You got beat honestly, and that's fine. You know, we all have one voice. You know, one voice is very powerful that says, hey, you've earned this. You deserve this. Take time off all that stuff. Start developing the other voice. The other voice that fights that voice, where it's not a designated day off. I don't care if it's running, swimming, biking, studying. If it's not a day off, don't take a day off. And what you do frequently becomes your frequency. So if you want to know your life, look at your habits. That's what you do frequently, right? And they add up to a rhythm. That rhythm becomes a pattern. That pattern becomes your character. That character becomes your life. You're not going to be able to break out of it until you change something about who you are. So there's so many people that's operating from a paradigm of fear. They got too much fear. Courage is where it starts. Courage is where the shifts start. Because the fear gonna be there. But daily courage is how you activate yourself even when the fear comes. The fear of success and the fear of failure, it paralyzes people. It minimizes your vision. It stops your movement. It makes you think small as hell. It's your fear that's stopping you. Insecurity, you don't think you're good enough. You don't think that's for you, right? So when you talk about frequencies, the shift comes in saying that, you know, you have to be what you want to achieve already. Don't you want to know what would happen if you spent just one year, just one year giving it your absolute all? You gave your diet your absolute all. You gave your fitness regimen your absolute all. You gave your work your absolute all. How drastically would your life change in just one year? One year of uninterrupted focus. The whole like journey of a process of something, you're trying to become a master of something is way more fun when you're uncovering the knowledge along the way rather than just being given it at the start. And I think it's a fool's approach to want to have all the answers at the beginning or even to think you have all of them. I still far from having all the answers. Maybe there'd be a way where I would start with the knowledge again and go on a different path and end up better or worse. I never know, but I would still rather go along the journey without the knowledge to begin with. The process it takes to be number one and stay at number one, you have no idea. Everybody wants to sit in your seat until they have to sit in your seat. Very few people understand what winning and success does to an individual's mental health. Everybody thinks the more you win, the more successful you are. It just makes everything so much easier. And they don't understand the pressures that these individuals put on themselves to continue to perform at the highest level. The more time you spend alone, you gotta figure out, okay, what your purpose is. And I say that because of this. You start seeking in those moments of not having any outside distractions. What happens is things become clear. Clarity sets in. And you're able to make decisions not based on what you saw that day or what you heard that day or what that person may have said to you. They're able to make decisions based on how you feel internally. Inside, we grow. You start from here and it comes out. And from within, we're not worried about the sun, the clouds, the people in the parking lots. We're worried about our mission at hand. Mortality, I think, is something we don't think about enough. The certainty. You know, we're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. Everyone always thinks about the tail end, right? And thinks about what happens after you die. Mark Twain had this great quote. He said, I wasn't alive for billions of years before my birth. And it didn't inconvenience me in the least. But this brief shaft of light is kind of magnificent, isn't it? I think I'll try it out. No, think if you're going to try it out beforehand, but when it's time to go, dive. Finish, find out. Come out the other side. Don't leave it and go, if I just would, uh-uh. That keeps me up. You half-ass something you just don't know. Whether you fail or succeed, God, what you want or didn't get what you want. Finding out, looking in the mirror and going, I didn't half-ass it. I went all the way. I found out. That's a grain burst of hope. What you're about to say and do will outlive you. Do it well. If life was nothing but green lights, and we didn't have yellows or reds, things that make us pause, hardships, crises, times for introspection, then what the hell would it all be for? We need the yellows and the reds. That's how we evolve. That's how, hopefully, there's some ascension to our being. If anything, I would say to my 50-year-old self, go fail more. If anything, I would say to you, go fail more. Forget them. Those people on the sideline that are saying the thumbs down or calling you something or being snarky, they're on the sidelines for a reason. If you're not getting past this today, this week, this month, this year, often a decade goes by, and you're still hung up, and you can't get rid of that thing, if it's holding you back from going where you want to go, maybe you should just deny that thing ever happened. Kick it in the head. Kick it off the curb. I'm done with you. I'm sick of you. I'm tired of hanging out with you. I'm tired of that thing, whatever it is, holding me back from going where I want to go. Happiness is an emotional response to an outcome. If I win, I will be happy. If I don't, I won't. It's an if-then, cause-and-effect, with-propos standard that we cannot sustain because we immediately raise it every time we attain it. See, happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result-reliant. And I say happiness is what you're after. Then you're going to be let down frequently, and you're going to be unhappy much of your time. Joy though, joy is a different thing. It's something else. Joy is not a choice. It's not a response to some result. It's a constant. Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do, no matter the outcome. And we like to say, no, freedom and light is the one that carries. Man, I don't know. That's maybe too evolved for us to really grab all the rage and anger and revenge, our mighty powerful emotions right here. And this is the beauty, delayed gratification. Tee yourself up. Do yourself a favor. Make the choices, the purchases today that pay you back tomorrow. The choices we make compounding assets of our future. You need to hold yourself more accountable. Life is not easy. It is not. Don't try to make it that way. Life's not fair. It never was. It isn't now, and it won't ever be. Do not fall into the trap. The entitlement trap of feeling like you're a victim. You are not. Get over it and get on with it. There's a responsibility to freedom and that there is freedom in responsibility. It is just as important where we are not as it is where we are. But the first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not. I know who I am. That's not the first step. The first step's usually, I know who I am not. Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are. You know that group of friends that you hang out with? They gossip too much or kind of shady. They really aren't going to be there for you in a pitch. How about that bar we keep going to that we always seem to have the worst hangout from? Or that computer screen that keeps giving us an excuse not to get out of the house and engage with the world and get some real human interaction. How about that food that we keep eating? That stuff tastes so good going down it makes us feel like crap the next week or we feel lethargic and we keep putting on weight. How about that? Well, those people, those places, those things, stop giving them your time and energy. And you quit giving them your time. You inadvertently find yourself spending more time and in more places that are healthy for you that bring you more joy. Why? Because you just eliminated the who's, the where's, the what's and the when's that were keeping you from your identity. I promise you, too many options will make a tyrant of us all. So get rid of the excess, the wasted time. Decrease your options. If you do this, you will have accidentally, almost innocently, put in front of you what is important to you, a process of elimination. It's so much easier to figure out who you're not than if you start eliminating the who I'm not. By sheer mathematics, you end up... Mr. Monroe Wills was 94 years old. And he said, Grandpa, he said, can you give me some advice for life? And Grandpa says, oh yeah, money. Best advice I can give you is this. I've had many crises in my life. Most of them ever happened. You just gotta keep living, man. L-I-V-I-N. The ways of a person, the thoughts, the deeds, the actions, it's all based around his heart. For what is a man? A man is his heart. A lying, cheating heart means a lying, cheating man. A loving, merciful heart means a loving, merciful man. A living heart means a living man. A dead heart means a dead man. Regardless to man's title, regardless to man's wealth, rank, or position, if the heart is not great, then he cannot be great. But if the heart is great, that man remains great under all circumstances. There is nothing that causes you to be more motivated than a feeling that you're growing every day toward becoming more and more of what you're capable of becoming. Study after study shows that if you're not growing, you're stagnating. It's that people who are negative and depressed and have low self-esteem are people who have sort of plateaued out in life. The deeper I go, the less choice I have. The freer I feel. The more an ego I was, the more choice I thought I had, the more limited I was. What I have found through my experience is when we surrender, things may not go according to plan, but it will often be beyond your plan. And when you surrender, what I have found is you will always end up, always. This is a promise. In talking about promise, you will always end up in the right place at the right time with the right people doing the right thing, even though the path that you take may not be the one that you most expect. I guarantee you if you learn this, every single good thing you are looking for will come chasing you. The law of mental transformation. If you are looking for money, stop looking. If you are chasing success, stop chasing. If every other day you have a new idea on how to generate success, you are on the fool's journey. As you evolve and grow, you align yourself with the qualities that naturally draw success towards you. Transformation is magnetic. Refine your character. Expand your skills. Enhance your mind. Reject fear. The more you become a magnet for the opportunities and achievements you seek, the more success will find you. It's about evolving from within. Allow your growth to create the conditions for success to come to you. Stop lying to yourself. You know what needs to be done, but you keep making excuses, pretending you're helpless. That's self-destruction. Second, you're wasting time and you know exactly how. You can't stick to anything because your mind is constantly distracted. Look at the people you spend the most time with. Are they pushing you forward or keeping you stuck? Surrounding yourself with people who lack ambition will inevitably pull you in the same direction. If they're not helping you grow, why are you hanging around them? You either decide to finally realize that you need to make these changes or you decide you're happy with the outcome. You know we'll meet you in the future if you don't take action right now. Don't stress in the face of adversity. Make adversity something you desire for an opportunity to grow. Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them about the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Nassim Taleb said they are born, then put in a box. They go home to live in a box. They study by ticking boxes. They go to what is called work in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box. They drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box. They talk about thinking outside the box. And when they die, they are put in a box. So think outside the box. Break the norms. Trailblaze. Ask questions. Remember when someone calls you crazy, they are still stuck inside the box. That's what defines the greatest performers from the people who haven't quite made it yet. It's really their ability to say, oh, if I should train now, I will. Oh, if I should eat like this, I will. Oh, if I should do this, okay, then I will. It's collapsing that knowing what you should do and actually doing it and making that one. And that's ultimately a choice. Let me tell you a secret though. The most successful people in the world are also the world's biggest failures. Like if you look at Walt Disney, he was fired from his dream job as an animator because he lacked creativity. When you look at Michael Jordan, he was cut from his high school basketball team because he wasn't good enough. And he became the greatest basketball player ever. J.K. Rowling, who Harry Potter, she was rejected by 12 publishers. And that book went on to sell 500 million copies. And the creator of Honda said that success is 99% failure. So when you think of failure, just remember it's not the opposite of success. It is actually a pivotal part of success. You're a fool when you start something new. And so if you're not willing to be a fool, then you'll never start anything new. And if you never start anything new, then you won't develop. And so the willingness to be a fool is the precursor to transformation. And that's the same as humility. And so if you're gonna write your destiny, you can do a bad first job. You're gonna get smarter as you move forward. That's the thing is that, so if something beckons to you, that's what happens here. Maybe the star that Geppetto wished on was the wrong damn star, but at least it was a star. And so you say in your life, well, something grips you and fills you with interest. And you think, well, should I do that? And the answer is, if not that, then something. You know what life A is gonna get you. You've been doing it over and over and over and getting the same results. You want something different, you gotta do something different. It's that simple. You want different, you gotta do different. You want better, you gotta be better. You want change, you gotta change. The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days. You listen to other people, to their opinions and their blindness. It'll beat you up and you'll never be able to reach the goals that you want to reach. So the answer is to become internally oriented, to know what you want, to know what your goals are, to know what your desires are, to know what makes you unique, and to put your focus on that and not on other people's expectations of you. And remember, before you do something special, just do something. People say to me, well, I can't predict my future. I'm in the unknown, and I always say the best way to predict your future is to create it, not from the known, but from the unknown. What thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain? What behaviors do you want to demonstrate in one day? The act of repursing the mentally, closing your eyes and rehearsing the action. Sometimes life is asking you to stop being so worried about everything that's going to go wrong when the reality is you're the one manifesting the thing that you don't want to happen because you're choosing to believe that that's what's going to happen. It's always going to feel scary to your ego to do something that it's never done before. That's what the fear actually is. So it just draws you back to going back to thinking that I don't know if I should do this when the reality is there's an internal part of you that knows it's time for change. Just learn to trust it because you will come into realization after you make the decision that it was the right decision. And you'll feel how it actually helped you let go of that identity that's been dragging you down into a reality that you've already outgrown. If your definition of success is win or lose giving everything you've got and growing or learning along the way then you're setting yourself up for success. I really think the biggest cheat code in life is just going after it and not being concerned of whether or not you fail at one specific task instead understanding the big picture what your long-term goal is and knowing if you keep driving forward and never f***ing quit in the end you will succeed. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. So yes, staying true to yourself is a powerful act of rebellion. Your authenticity becomes your greatest strength in an environment that pressures you to fit in. I prefer to be the kind of person who steps up and facing the challenge than the kind of person who stays below the line and avoids the challenge. What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want? How badly do you want it? How much are you willing to suffer? Those three questions our high performers face every day. Owning for happiness. Aim for purpose. Happiness is temporary. It comes and it goes like the waves of the ocean. So enjoy it as it comes and smile as it fades away. Purpose touches your soul. Now pursuing it doesn't always make you happy and a lot of times it actually makes you frustrated and confused. It also sometimes brings you joy and adventure but it is complex like a renaissance poem. There's ups and there's downs. There's twists and turns. Stagnation and chaos. It is pure and that is the journey in which you will be fulfilled. You only have one chance at this life. You do know that, right? And if you are always playing that supporting role as Ed Milet says when the credits roll at the end of your movie at the end of your life it's just going to say supporting actor number three and it'll have your name. Don't you want to be the main star? Don't you want to be the key character in your life story? Don't you want to make the best decisions? Human beings have the ability unlike animals because we have the ability to create our reality and my reality is as I pursuit Steven. You have the ability to create your reality. What you see here in your head is what you will see as your exterior. It's always like that. I walk into a party. I say, I don't like that guy. You know what? I'm right. You walk in and say, that's a wonderful guy. You're right too. We're both right. Starting is the hardest part but you've already done that. Most people never even get to this point. They let fear of failure, rejection or embarrassment hold them back but you're already ahead of the game because you took action. Don't waste time worrying about people who doubt you. They're just projecting their own insecurities. The ones who laugh at you for starting are the ones who are too afraid to start themselves. Keep pushing. Real ones will recognize your effort and the rest, they don't matter. So every time you show up and every time you're on point, if you do that on the regular, even if every day, you're not even making 1% improvements, you're making 0.01% improvements, over time, those will add up and those will add up exponentially. So on a day-by-day basis, I mean, you're not going to expect anything crazy but you can become completely unrecognizable. You do whatever the hell you want. Just do it well. That's important. And don't do any damn thing that you will be ashamed of doing tomorrow. Isn't it? What other people say, it doesn't matter but you should not be ashamed of what you have done. Isn't it so? This much you must keep. This much pride and freedom you must keep in your life. It doesn't matter. The whole world says you're wrong but you are not ashamed of what you have done. That much you must always keep in your life. If that one thing, if you give up, I'm telling you, you'll live a very poor life. You may have everything but you'll have nothing. There's a quote from Viktor Frankl that says, when a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. What is your definition of all in? Everyone likes to talk about early mornings, late nights, hard work. That's not all in. Everybody in this room is a hard worker. Everybody in this room is talented. Talent is a gift. It's not a promise. Everybody in here is putting in long hours. It's the other things that you do beyond all in. If you want your day to feel easy, do the most difficult thing that you least want to do first. If you just do the things you do not want to do, you will have everything you have ever wanted. I need you to go to the next level. I need you to elevate. I need you to dominate. I need you to win. I need you to be that moment, to be that man. I need you to be him. I need you to be her. I need you to be that. And you know why you do that? Because you got to believe. If you do not have the ability to resist, to manage, to overcome doubts, to overcome worries, to overcome concerns, in whatever circumstance that prevents you from succeeding, this is not the year to talk about your problems. This is the year to solve your problems. Decide who you want to become. You know, you can't drift into a new life. You can't back into it. You need to design your new life. Envision a version of yourself that you respect, that you really want to become. And be specific. Build a life that a man or a woman would really want to live. You have to make a decision with such firm intention that the amplitude of that decision carries a level of energy that's greater than the hardwired programs in your brain and the emotional addictions in your body. And your body has to respond to a new mind. So then you make a choice and that choice becomes an experience that you never forget. And the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Your body is responding to a new mind. But you can't do it being your normal self. It requires a level of energy that is the epiphenomenon of matter. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I think that there are many ways how you can, let's say, motivate yourself to walk this path. So why would I face the dark side of myself knowing already that it's going to be painful? Why would I do that? You have to accept what has happened. You need to accept reality. It's one thing to accept the fact life isn't fair. This is cool. I don't deserve this. It's a whole nother ballgame to accept that this is what has happened and it's not changing. Same as like every time you face a challenge that was really, really difficult for you but you still pushed it through somehow. You still were patient and persevered and were consistent and still tried. And this type of challenge for me was a way bigger victory than anything that was easily attained. That means everything you've got inside of you, everything is truly equipped with that you got what it takes to make it through the battle, through the storm, to the next level. Let me tell you what, faith and worry don't get along. They don't coincide. They ain't dogs. They ain't homers. They ain't brothers. They ain't friends. They can't cohabitate. You got to believe. That means you got to have faith. We must suffer. You can run from it all you want. Once you come face to face with who you are, you have a starting point. The longer you hold on to this wish, the longer you prolong your own suffering. I mean, most of human suffering, our internal pain, our anguish, it comes from the desire to have things be different than how they are. You know, there's one quote I love from the poet Rumi. Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. So literally saying, nothing sustainable and worse while in this lifetime comes from something that's easily attained. Facing yourself. Face your shadow. Face the dark side. Look at your demons. Your lack of commitment is almost an insult to the people who believe in you. And that's what I'm trying to tell myself. There's people who believe in me. So this is what I'm telling myself right now today. There's people that believe in me and me having this hot commitment. It's not who the **** I am. It's not what my people, it's not what people who believe in me deserve. And I want to give back to people who believe in me. And everything's in arm's reach. You just have to work to get there. There is no easy road to what you want. It's a long road. Everybody that wants to do something doesn't understand the steps that you have to take to get there. And it's not just in entertainment. It's in all aspects of life, man. And that's what I learned at a young age. No matter what, you can't escape work. You can't. To truly change is to think greater than your environment. And every great person in history knew this. Whether it was William Wallace or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Queen Elizabeth I or Joan of Arc. They all had a vision. They all had an idea. Couldn't see it. Couldn't smell it. Couldn't taste it. Couldn't feel it. But it was alive in their mind. It was so alive in their mind that they began to live as if that reality was actually happening now. So can you believe in a future that you can't see or experience with your senses yet? But you've thought about enough times in your mind that your brain is literally changed to look like the event has already happened. Take all of the things that you got to do in a particular day and rank order them from the things that you want to do the least to the things that you want to do the most. And I guarantee one of the big reasons why you never get anything done is because you do the opposite. You start your day off doing all the things that you want to do and then you dread the rest of the day and chances are you probably just end up skipping it. But if you say, hey, let me start my day off by doing all these things that I don't want to do, by the time you're done with it, you're only left with all the things that you're looking forward to. So now you're proud of yourself because you did something difficult that was uncomfortable that you didn't want to do. And now you're excited because you get to enjoy the rest of your day and they say you can't have your cake and eat it too. How does suffering, how does hardship, how does pain give me purpose? The process of struggle and the one who bears it is a process of development, of strengthening, of learning, of readjusting. But not just to anything, my friend. You are moving towards taking steps closer to embodying what you truly are. You know what's crazy? You know you can be the winner if you really wanted to, right? You know that, right? But see, you keep playing the what if game. What if it don't work out this? What if it don't work out that? What if it do work out? Then what? You're going to be happy, right? You can't say you want to win, but then you're scared to lose. What kind of sense does that make? If you put your head down and lock it on the vision, how could you not win? Only thing that's going to cause you to lose is your mentality. But that's between you and you though. Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice. Life was the most brutal endurance sport of all time. And that's what we have to love about it. We have to flip it on its head and love the fact that life continues to attack us. There are no ******* timeouts. We have to know that when we die, we die with some me and some purpose in this world. I don't want to live at the level of feelings. You settle too low. You settle for what you see. You settle for what people say. You settle for old templates. You settle for old scripts. You settle for emotions. You can't have a victory without a battle. God is raising you up right now. He's doing it through a process. The level you will settle on is the level that you see yourself. Because what the enemy sent to stop you is not going to have its intended purpose. When that snake bites, don't panic. Don't fall apart. Just shake it off and keep moving forward. Keep thanking God that he's fighting your battle. Keep thanking him that what was meant for harm, he's turning to your advantage. If you don't stand up and decide to live and survive and move forward and find a way into the next season of your life, you will pass along the same spirit that has tormented you. And that's not just if you're on the edge. That's anybody who feels like quitting. Quitting the thing that God has called you to. It's not small. Don't die outside of your destiny. What is successful and what is failure? The differential are so small. We're talking about seconds. We're talking about reps. We're talking about the finest echelon of measurement that will make or break someone's life to be successful at that moment. And once you're at that moment successful, that gives a birth of a lifestyle that's unbeatable, second to none. But in order to have that first success, you must ensure yourself that you're giving it all you can today. It's time to stay focused. It's time to decide, loves partying, trying to fit in and socialize, rub elbows with everybody so people can stop calling you weird. Why are you so antisocial? Because I'm trying to get it. Why are you out there practicing in the hot sun when ain't nobody else out there? Because I'm trying to get it. The more weird you are is a reflection of how committed you are to focusing on your molding and shaping and developing your ideas and your craft so that when it's time for you to make your rounds, you gonna fly. Between the acting of a dreadful thing, between the moment when you are waiting to do something that you don't want to do, and the first motion, and the moment when you initiate the action, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. Life ain't about medals. It ain't about certificates. It ain't about houses, money, cars, fame, all that ----. It's about scars. So when you get judged with everything you're sitting down with, you won't get judged on your medals. You get judged on your scars because scars show your willingness to get to the side. They show your failures. They show your willingness to start from scratch. They show what you want to do to go the distance, to see what you're capable of. So make sure in life, don't be afraid to get scars. Stay hard. You know, everyone has their disabilities, let's say. And I know that some people are far more terribly affected than other people. I'm perfectly aware of that. But the question is, what do you do about that? And what you do is you set yourself up on your damn crutches and you struggle up the bloody hill. That's what you do. And you struggle up the hill towards the kingdom of God. That's what you do because the alternative is to descend into the abyss. That's the alternative. And then so to say, well, do you believe? It's like, I believe that you should struggle uphill towards the city of God on your crutches. That's what you should do. That's the opposite of the descent into the abyss. So the battle, the struggle, the hesitation takes place in that moment. That moment when we must step into the unknown. That moment filled with fear and horror. And that fear is what causes hesitation. And hesitation causes defeat. Hesitation is the enemy. Hesitation allows the moment to pass. The opportunity to be lost. The enemy to get the upper hand. Hesitation turns into cowardice. It stops us from moving forward, from taking initiative, from executing what we know we must. Hesitation defeats us. So we must defeat it. And it's possible that I can bring my greatness out here in the universe. That I can do what I want to do. It's possible. Possible. I can bounce back from adversity and reinvent my life. It's possible. Regardless of where I am, that things can get better for me. Get your feet on the ground. Step forward. Do not hesitate. Do not wait. Go forward and win. It's not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who errs. Who comes up short and short time and time again because there's no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deed. Who knows great enthusiasm. Great devotion. Who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. Who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring to be great. So that his place should never be with the cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. There's so many times in life you don't want to be doing what you're doing. You can't just quit. Remember this. It's in the hobby. It's in the joke. It's a lifestyle. Engage. Weakness is strong. I must be stronger. I must crush it into submission through force of will. So I savage the body. I push and pull and fight against gravity. I fight against fatigue and soreness and the weakness that says give in. I will not give in. I will fight. You gotta rise up. You gotta make your dreams a reality and live a damn masterpiece. You know this. Make a decision. What's the decision? What's the thing you came here for? Now we're at the moment. The clock is ticking. Life can be long. You bury your dreams. You quit this. Life gets long. It's only a thought if you don't take an action. The difference between a thought and a decision is an attribute. So we know and you know you just decided and you know what it is. You know what it is. A decision you've made. Something you do. Then you follow up with the action to make it real. What we don't do is we don't go inside. So literally turn yourself inside out. Read the book that says like we're writing a book every day of our lives but we never read that book. So what I would challenge this young man or young woman to do is you have to look inside of yourself and see what you really want. What are you passionate about? So when I speak, I speak from passion. I speak from experience. I speak from suffering. That's the only way I believe this is my experience in life. The only way you're ever going to get to the other side of this journey is you have got to suffer to grow. To grow you must suffer. Commitment is staying true to what you said you would do long after the mood that you've set it in has left. Commitment is staying true to what you said you would do long after the mood that you've set it in has left. Like I know when the mood is right, we hype, we talking, we high-fiving, we talking about what we're going to do and then we get in that certain moment of adversity, that certain moment of truth and it tests our character. And the thing I love about adversity, adversity introduces you into who you really are as a person. But you can only do that through the struggle of life and most people avoid the struggle. Most people go through life avoiding pain and when you go through life like that, something in you dies, something in you that you never activate is lying dormant in there that you never get a chance to call on because you have not challenged yourself. Somebody said the land of familiarity belongs to the dead. But sometimes in day-to-day life you can lose track of the long-term goal. It fades from your vision, it slips from your mind. Wrong. I want that long-term goal to be so embedded in my mind that I never lose sight of it, ever. And the little tasks and projects and short-term goals that you tackle need to lead towards strategic victory, winning the long war. When you get tired, when you get fatigued, when you get down, when you're in a slump, it's your habits, rituals, routines and your standards that carry you through. And if you don't have good habits, you don't have good rituals, you don't have good routines, always in your life, you will fall down in bad times, in slumps and fatigue and in stress. I'm telling you that, look, you can't activate life. You can't begin to experience life in the way you want to experience. You can't have it, you can't be it, you can't do it until you activate it. Until, yes, it's all in there. All your gifts, all your talents, all your, everything you need to do to be what you've been called to do, what you've been birthed to do, you can't do until you activate it, until you recognize you matter. Everything about you is great, but the problem is, you have consciously chosen to be average. So when you say to yourself, support, there's no coach, there's no trainer to keep you going, it's only you. The whole thing is this, don't say a word. Stay uncommon amongst uncommon people. You're never done. Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done. Stay hard. Once you begin to discover who you are, then you'll really realize how you have been given authority and dominion over everything on the face of the earth, including all the dimensions of your life. In other words, when the outcome changes and it's not what we want it to be and it doesn't turn out the way we want it to turn out, do we still value the thing that we once said we valued? Is our character still intact, right? Because we all know it, character's not something we inherit. Character's something we gotta wake up every single day, we gotta fight it, we gotta build it in the midst of opposition, in the midst of challenges, in the midst of uncertainty. Every day, do something that moves you toward that goal, that keeps that goal alive and in sight and in focus. However small or insignificant that step might seem, take it, do it, make it happen because that goal isn't going to achieve itself.