After Listening to This, You’ll Unlock Self-Discipline Like Never Before
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I want to talk to you today about how closed doors can't stop you We've all had times where something didn't work out. We didn't get the promotion The loan didn't go through a relationship didn't make it we did our best we prayed we believed But the door didn't open you may feel like you're behind a closed door

In your health, you can't seem to get well. In your career, you're working hard but not getting ahead. In a relationship, things keep falling through. Stay encouraged. Those closed doors are not permanent.

The enemy doesn't control your doors. People don't control your doors. Fear, addiction, depression don't control your doors. And I believe you're about to see some doors that have been closed for a long time suddenly open. You can't explain it. You didn't see it coming, but suddenly your health improves.

Suddenly you meet the right person. Suddenly your career takes off. What happened? The doorkeeper stepped in. Get ready for some open doors. Get ready to write a new chapter for your life.

Get ready to live a life that will outlive you. Get ready to rob the cemetery of your gifts and talents and abilities. Get ready to be in a fight mode. Life is a fight for territory. And once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over. Stuff's going to happen to you. Things are coming after you right now. Tragedies, hard times, sickness, pain.

All kinds of things are coming after you right now, including blessings, including opportunities. To make your dreams become real, to no longer dream but walk in them. You can't. 90%. You can be good. You can be good. You can be great. But you still won't get it all. I'm telling you, when you become free, there's nothing you can't have, nothing you can't do, nothing you can't be. And I just, I believe that you're in this room right now. I believe that we're in the same space right now.

I believe we're all in this place together. Listen to me. I believe that we're all in this place together because all of us, all of us hate average. None of us want to be good. And for those of us who reach greatness, we have a desire to push past greatness and see what phenomenal looks like. So I need everybody in the room when you think about your goal and you think about your dream.

I need you to understand, since I said to my wife in the hospital room, I can. I will. I must. And you want to take advantage of the opportunity and the lifetime of the opportunity.

Make a move for you. Make a move for your dream. Make a move for a better future. Don't sit there watching and wasting time looking at Netflix and all that other foolishness out there. Friend of mine said, "Oh man, I got 500 channels on my TV." Who's got time to watch 500 channels? "Herein my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit." Excuse me?

watching garbage day in and day out. How do you expect things to get better for you? People say, "Oh, garbage in, garbage out." That's a lie. Garbage in, garbage stays. It makes you unproductive. It makes you cynical. You get in a depressed state of mind. That's not real. Garbage in, garbage stays, and it shows up in your attitude, in your behavior. It blurs your vision of what's possible for you.

It's a distraction. My son John Lester is right. People pay more attention to their distractions than their destiny. You have a destiny. There's something, there's a work, there's a greater work that you're supposed to do. These things you should do and greater things you should do. In fact, you are here to do the greater things. And if you don't know that, ask somebody. Watch people who are doing the greater work and get around them and learn from them.

That's what time we're here. That's the purpose. Not here just to have a good time. Yeah, you can have a good time. I have a ball. I enjoy every day. When they come to see my ashes, they'll see me smiling from the ashes. And I used to say something like, I sure hope things will change for the better. Then here's what I found out. They're not going to change.

Somebody says, "Well then, how will my life ever change?" Answer, "When you change." When you change, when you get better, it'll get better. If you change, it'll all change. Don't put it on someone else. Hope that someone else will change it for you. Take responsibility for yourself. Take personal responsibility. You can't change the circumstances or the seasons or the wind, but you can change your reading habits.

You can change whether or not you go for the skills, burn the midnight oil, turn yourself around, multiply your value by 2, 3, 5, 10. That you've got charge of. That you have control of. You don't have control of the constellations, but you've got control over whether or not you go to night school, take adult classes, learn some new skills. You have control over that. And if you don't, that's your fault.

You've got to take personal responsibility. You've got to be self-reliant. You, you, you. Nobody else can change your life, alter your ambitions, pave a golden road for you. But you can. It's up to you. Be responsible for yourself. You're okay the way you are. That's what we tell young people. You're okay the way you are. It's like...

And there's nothing worse than you can tell someone who's young than that, especially if they're miserable. And lots of them, well, if they're miserable and aimless, it's like, oh, I'm miserable and aimless. And sometimes I'm suicidal and I'm nihilistic and I don't have any direction in your life, in my life. It's like, you're okay the way you are here. And it's like, they don't want to hear that. They want to hear, look, you know, you're...

And you know this, you're useless. You know nothing. You haven't got started. You've got 60 years to put yourself together, and God only knows what you could become. And that's so... That message is so much more... It's so funny because it's such an attack, but it's so positive.

Because there's faith there in the potential that makes up the person rather than the miserable actuality that happens to be manifesting itself at the moment. And young people respond extraordinarily well to that because you know that if you're a parent and you love your child, your son, your daughter, what you're trying to foster

is the best in them. You want that to manifest itself across the course of their life. You want them to become continually more than they are, to see what they could be. And I think that's part of the great message of the West is that that's the ethical requirement of individual being in the proper sense is to constantly

know that you're not what you could be to take responsibility for that and to commit yourself like body and soul to the attainment of that ideal. One day I began to realize how I was growing as a leader and the change that was happening within me and I stopped asking the question how long will it take and I started asking the question how far can I go and everything changed that day. I realized

that you can set goals and have five-year goals, whatever. But I changed from a goal mindset to a growth mindset. And the fact that if I would be intentional in the areas of growth that would have the return and would fit who I was,

that I could really be successful and help a lot of people. And that was kind of a shift for me. And so when I wrote my first leadership book, I thought I would write one leadership book and I'd be done. I didn't think 100 books later, I had a lady, they said, "You've written more books than I've ever read in my life." You know what I mean? But I didn't have any intention to write a lot of books.

But growth allows you to continue to expand yourself and your world until there's just so much more that you know and so much more that you want to share. So my journey has been really one of understanding that if I every day intentionally grow, the question is just how far can I go? And I don't know that answer. I'm still growing. I'm still moving towards that finish line.

You're never ever ever ever going to feel like doing the things you need to do in order to have what you want.

You're always going to need to push yourself. You're always going to need to parent yourself. It's the only way to prepare yourself. It's like, it's just studying. And the more you're prepared, the easier your time is. The more you care, the more you prepare. From studying, from reading, from putting yourself in uncomfortable positions, traveling abroad,

That kind of stuff, I think, builds a much more impressive character. We haven't done the things that we know are important for us and for our goals. And so that stops now. See, success is not something that's gifted to you. Success is something that you have to go get. Remember this.

Your business is always a reflection of you. What do you do? Where do you go from here? You see, instead of doing that and putting all your eggs in one basket, the best thing you can do is start investing in yourself first. Invest in a skill set that you can deliver to the marketplace in exchange of money. This dramatically lowers your risk.

You don't have reasons. You can get a big enough why. You can figure out how to do about anything, but you got to have purpose because purpose provides drive. Now, if you know what you want and you know why, you're light years ahead of most of the population, but you got to go this step that most people seem to avoid. That is you got to take massive. The keyword there is massive.

Massive action can be a cure-all when you know what you're after and you know why you want it. What's the benefit of allowing fear to hold you back? What's the benefit of giving up on yourself? Of not stepping out on life and taking life on? What is the benefit for you? What's the plus in that?

It's not going to happen. You've got to ask yourself, how long am I going to allow this to hold me back? You focus on your vision, your mission, and the long-term things that you want to do with your life. And eventually, you'll find enough people that want to run with you. And when we can find the people who believe what we believe, we're weirdly drawn to them because our very survival depends on it. We need it.

And so the more you can give of yourself, the more you can give of what you believe, the more you can discipline with discipline, say and do the things you actually believe, strange things start to happen. You know that those who do the things that they're passionate about do better, but it's not helpful advice. And so the question is where does passion come from? Passion is a result. Passion is an energy. Passion is the feeling you have when you're engaged in something that

you love. Passion is the feeling you have that you would probably do this for free, you know, and you can't believe somebody pays you to do it. So start practicing using programs for your mind. It could change our life. What idea are you setting on? Write your ideas down. And then, once you get that idea, take the leap!

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