The Right Mindset: There’s Greatness in You

There is nothing as powerful as a changed mind. You can change your hair, your clothing, your address, your spouse, your residence, but if you don’t change your mind, the same experience will perpetuate itself over and over again because everything outwardly changed, but nothing inwardly changed. There is nothing as powerful as a changed mind.

If you want something out of life, if you want to change yourself, if you want to acquire something, if there’s some goal that you want to reach, changing your behaviors, overcoming negative habits, it’s challenging. It’s hard. But once we begin to come to grips with the fact that living is difficult, life is very challenging. You will never ever have a problem free moment in life. Most people go through life, never discovering what their talents are. Most people never develop their talents, they have skills and abilities, but if you don’t nurture them, if you don’t develop them, they will never serve you.

Your gifts can take you many places, if you develop your gifts. Most of us don’t like to do those things that come easy to us. When you step into your fears and continue to push yourself to go on, something happens for you. If you don’t develop the courage to do that which has been given you to do, and you’ve spent a lot of time going around trying to convince other people and trying to get their approval, what will happen is that you will lose your nerve and other people will convince you that what you are doing doesn’t have any value and you’ll give up on your dream.

NOTHING CHANGES IF NOTHING CHANGES

How much time do you have left? When you start thinking about that, we don’t know. Stop wasting valuable time. Knowing that if we begin to live our lives as if each day were our last, our lives will take on a whole new meaning. You’ve got to develop a sense of urgency. Stop living your life like you have a thousand years to live. In life you’re either here today and you’re gone tomorrow. If there’s something that you want to do and you can’t do it all at one time, do just a little bit of it.

How many years ago did you come up with what you could and couldn’t do with your life? How many years ago? Most people, if they really look at how they’re living their life today, it’s based on a set of standards, a set of beliefs that they made choices about 10, 20, 30 or more years ago. I mean, very often we made decisions in our youth or very young about what to believe, about what we were capable of, about who we are as a person, and that becomes the glass ceiling view that controls us.

If you want something, you have got to be relentless. You’ve got to learn how to become resourceful. You’ve got to learn how to become creative, power to hold on in spite of everything, the power to endure. This is the winner’s quality. The hunger, the ability to face defeat again and again without giving up. This is a winner’s quality. What this power is, I cannot say, all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man or a woman is in that state of mind in which he or she knows exactly what he or she wants and is fully determined not to quit until they find it.

THERE’S GREATNESS ALREADY INSIDE YOU.

There’s greatness in you and you’ve got to learn how to tune out the critics outside and the critic inside. I’m going to harness my will and I’m not going to let anything stop me. I deserve this. Decide that you’re going to push yourself. Most people give up on themselves easily. You know the human spirit is powerful, there’s nothing as powerful. It’s hard to kill the human spirit. You are unstoppable. Live your life with passion, with some drive.

Most of us go through life with our brakes on holding back, not giving all that we have, not sharing all of ourselves. Most of us go to our grave still holding on. You’ve got to focus on you as you convince you, as you sell yourself everyday. Everyday you will begin to see a difference in the things that you’re doing. Selling yourself on your ability to perform a job, to achieve a certain objective. Telling your self every day, “Here I go again and I got what it takes. This is my day and nothing out here is going to stop me.”

As Kendrick Lamar said, “It was always me versus the world until I found it’s me versus me.” I think that’s where most of us start. We think that there’s something outside that we’re struggling against. We think that literally the world is against us and we’re raging against something. But we don’t even know what that thing is that we’re raging against. And as you fight and try to make your way, and as you try to accomplish something incredible, you find that you’re not making any headway.

And that moment that you finally begin to break through and build something extraordinary, in that moment, the realization is that it was always you trying to figure out how to become the best version of yourself. And once you grasp that, once you let the noise die away. Once you stop worrying about what other people think, what other people want, what other people have accomplished, what other people have, once you let go of all of that and ask one simple question, how extraordinary can I become? What am I capable of?

WHAT ARE MY LIMITS?

How far can I push myself in this time that I have on this earth? Exactly how much of my potential can I wring out of myself? And by that I don’t mean something mystical, by that I mean how much can I become capable of? How far can I push myself? What can I build? How can I change this world? But all by doing one simple thing, pushing myself to get better every day. And as Napoleon Hill said, strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. So the irony is when you let go of trying to please the world, when you let go of trying to change the world, when you stop trying to move mountains, you will realize that a far harder struggle awaits you.

And that struggle is becoming something new. That struggle is becoming something different. That struggle is re-centering yourself, finding out who you are, building yourself piece by piece until finally you realize what it takes to actually become a better version of yourself. You realize that it takes nothing less than your everything, your total commitment. Every bit of focus that you have, a willingness to break yourself down so that you can build yourself back up. But if you’re willing to put in that effort, if you’re willing to transform, if you’re willing to change and fight and struggle, you will be rewarded with growth.

You’ll be rewarded with improvement. You’ll be rewarded with the ability to close your eyes. Imagine a world and then open your eyes and make that world come true. As Derek Jeter said, “There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.” At the end of the day, whether you believe in talent or not is completely irrelevant. Everyone should believe in hard work. Everything in your life is literally a result of that. You’re born an infant, a lump of flesh that can’t even hold its own head up, and yet somehow by practicing, by learning, by growing, you’re able to get better.

YOUR WORK ETHIC MEANS EVERYTHING

You’re literally incapable of anything when you’re born. Every skill that you have in your life, all the things that you take for granted, at one point you couldn’t do them. So understanding that humans truly are an adaptation machine and that they are capable of acquiring any skill that they want, but it requires hard work. It requires that you do the reps, it requires that you put in the effort. And at the end of the day, the people that you’re going to surpass are not going to be the people that have less talent than you. Maybe they even have more talent than you.

It’s going to be the people that you’re willing to outwork. But until you’re willing to outwork them, you’re always going to be stuck. And as John Irving said, “To do anything really well, you have to overextend yourself.” And that’s the key. If you want to put an extraordinary performance, if you want to absolutely dazzle people, then you have to do something amazing. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to be willing to do things that other people think are going to break you, that other people simply believe there’s no way that you could be able to pull that off.

That the human animal just is not capable of the lengths to which you are professing to go. And when you profess it, you have to be willing to back it up and you have to put yourself on that march knowing in no uncertain terms, under no circumstances and for no reason whatsoever, would you ever be willing to back down. And when you go in with that level of certainty, then and only then are you actually going to be able to pull this off. And as Billie Jean King said, “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” Fatigue will literally chip away at your will to win.

It is the thing inside of your mind, that weak voice that tells you that you’re not going to be able to make it. The weak voice that begs you to stop and the weak voice that promises safety and security if you would just quit. And here’s the worst part about that, it’s right. If you quit right now, if you stop, just sit down, relax. You’re not at risk anymore. You’re not at risk of embarrassment, you’re not at risk of failure, but you’re also not at risk of greatness. And if you really want to achieve something, you’ve got to find ways to put yourself at risk of something great happening.

You’ve got to put yourself at risk of overextending yourself. You’ve got to be willing to face that you may die, that you may actually fall. And here’s the thing. For the people that dismiss that, they’d say they would never put themselves in that situation, then you have limits. And make no mistake, those limits are self placed. And for the people that are willing to push that, for people that are willing to go beyond that, for people who understand there are things in this world that they’re prepared to die for, and it is the thing that they put at the center of their life.

It is the thing that they are living for, but they’re not going to stop. And they understand that where the human mind thinks it will break is far short of where it will actually break. But before you can find that point, you’ve got to be willing to push yourself. You’ve got to be willing to go harder and farther than anybody thinks is reasonable or sensible. That’s the path. And so the question is, can you be thought a fool? The question is, do you believe in something so much that you would put yourself at risk like that? The question is, can you face down everyone, including the weak voice inside of your own mind to make the world come true that you want to see come true? Because at the end of the day, nobody’s going to do it for you. So if you’re a champion, keep going until it’s done.

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