Discipline Your Thoughts—Train Your Brain To Focus Like Never Before Motivational Speech
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The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift.

a new podcast from Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Etlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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Life is not fair and that is the reality Disease and accidents don't care if their victim is a good person. They have no reason no Justification and no mercy and you cannot stop. So what do you do? Life's not easy. It is not don't try to make it that way life's not fair It never was it is it now and it won't ever be

Keep going because there's people that don't want to see you succeed. Keep going because you want to prove those people wrong. You want to knock the naysayers down. You want to make them your footstool. I'm telling you to keep going when you face opposition. I'm telling you to keep going when you face adversity. People always ask me like there's some magical response.

How did you go from just coming from Liberty City, selected one of the top five speakers in the world? I was willing to work. Most people aren't willing to do that because I was moving. I want you to write this out. Keep it moving.

One of the things that you don't want to do is become comfortable with where you are. When you know in your heart of hearts you can have more and you can do more and there's a life for you beyond survival. And I just felt that I could do more. I say step up. Be the one who people look to absorb the impact and the negativity.

No matter what is happening, no matter how hard the fight is, as long as you keep fighting, you win. Only surrender is defeat. Only quitting is the end. So fight on. Sometimes you're gonna just say you just don't have it anymore. You must reconnect with your possibilities.

It's time for us to rise again. It's time for you to rise up. It's time for you to make that first step. It's time for you to start grinding so that you can make it happen. We got a lot riding on you. And I'm telling you, greatness is here. You can be and do whatever you want. And nobody can stop you. Nobody can stop you but you.

Dostoevsky said that in Notes from the Underground, a great, great book. You know, he said, I love this, it was his early criticism of the notion of a political utopia. He said, look, if you gave people everything they wanted,

They had nothing to eat but cake and nothing to do but sit in warm pools and busy themselves with the continuation of the species That was his his lines that the first thing they would do well Maybe after the first week was like gold kind of half insane and smash everything up just so that something that they didn't expect would happen so that they'd have something interesting to do and it's so right because

You know, the utopian notion that if you just had all the material stuff you wanted that you'd be... Well, what would you be? What would you do?

You just sit on the couch and watch TV. I don't know what, you'd be cutting yourself just for entertainment in no time flat. And that's the sort of thing that people do. So we're not adapted for security and utopia. We're adapted for a certain amount of security because we are vulnerable. But mostly we want to have one foot out where we don't know what the hell is going on, because that's where you're alert and alive and tense and with it.

And, you know, I think, I believe this, and I believe it actually has something to do with the hemispheric structure of the physiology of your brain, because the right hemisphere looks roughly adapted to what you don't know, and the left hemisphere, this is a very, this is an oversimplification, but a useful one.

is adapted to the world that you do know and the right place for you to be is halfway between them because then you can tell that that's what's so cool and this tells you that this is actually reality that's manifesting itself to you you know that sense of active engagement you have in the world when things are working well for you you know where you're where you should be at the right time

You're alert and on top of things and engaged and you don't have much of a sense of time and the sense of the tragedy of life sort of recedes and that's when you've got one foot where it's secure and one foot out in the unknown and your brain signals to you that you're in the right place by making what you're doing meaningful.

And that sense of meaning is actually a neurophysiological signal that you've got the forces of the cosmos properly balanced in your being at that moment. And that's why it feels so good. Now, what else could it possibly be? I mean, you know, our brain is capable of looking beyond our vision. That's what it's for. And that sense of engagement, there's no reason to assume that that's anything but a real signal. And you can reduce it. You could say, well...

The problem with being where you know only is that you don't know everything and that's going to be a problem in the future. And the problem with being where you know nothing is that's just too much, man. Like, you know, you go into panic mode because anything can happen there and you can't handle it.

So you've got to mediate between those two things. You want to be secure enough so that your physiology isn't revving out of control, and you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep updating yourself constantly, constantly, constantly, and that's

That's the place where information flow is maximized. And you know that because that's where you are when you're having a really interesting conversation with someone or you're gripped by a book or you're really into a movie or maybe something that you do as a, you know, apart from your work or maybe even in your work, you're into it. And that's because you are in the right place at the right time. And your whole nervous system is signaling that to you. And I would say that's the sort of place that you should be all the time.

Of course you can't be because no one's perfect, but that's the recreation of paradise on earth. It's something like it because you are in the right place at the right time when that is happening. I think people's relationship with time. We talk about relationships with humans. How's your relationship with your kids? How's your relationship with your wife, your dad, or your parents? But we never talk about a relationship with money and time. And your relationship with time is such a key component

of your life because when you get caught in a routine, time goes so quickly. When you understand that there are maybe only 28 summers left and if you want to truly get as much out of, experientially out of life, it just creates a tremendous amount of urgency. So, and the fear goes away because you're like, shit man, nobody on the planet, like everybody, no one's gonna be here in 100 years. Do I care what he thinks? Like, we're not gonna be here in 100 years, so why won't I take the chance?

And it's just, I don't know. It's just so, I stopped writing it because I'm so aware of it. There's not a day that goes by when my head hits the pillow where I don't say to myself, like, you know, did I maximize the day? And am I, you know, am I aware of my mortality? And it might sound depressing, but it's not. For me, it's thrilling. It's thrilling. It's thrilling.

You have to make that decision for yourself. You have to decide, I'm going to pursue that path, which is going to be really, really hard and difficult and take many, many years and be a great sacrifice, or am I going to pursue being a great employee? Now, if you want to be a great employee, you've got to remember something. You're hired to help someone else achieve their goals, which is cool. There's nothing wrong with it.

But if you don't understand that, you are not going to be a good employee. So you have a boss and they say, "Here's our goal for the quarter. You're going to help me get there." You work like hell to make sure that they achieve that goal. You're part of that team. That's very important. And then you keep moving up the ladder. And the great thing about that is if you're a good employee, you can also do very well. It's not the same as being an entrepreneur.

You're never going to probably make as much money as you could have had you started the company, is my point. But you'll get the Saturdays off, the Sundays hang out, go to the soccer games with the kids, have a more balanced life. There is no balance in entrepreneurship. We talked about love and how to have love in a relationship. And one of the complaints that I hear or one of the issues that I hear in people's lives is that they don't feel loved. They don't experience being loved. They're not loved.

And they're then left with this kind of tail chasing exercise, okay? Where they're on the lookout to love themselves first. I first must love myself, which is a, that statement alone is very insular. It kind of turns you in the way, all right? So, which goes against the grain of love as an expression, right? So love is an expression, but I have to love myself first.

It doesn't quite add up and you got it again. You got to check this out for yourself. Okay, so what we got to and my conversation with the client was that they themselves could see when they're being loved that is when someone in the life says I love you that they experienced love and right away in the moment it seems like I'm experiencing you giving me love

If you look again, if you actually inspect again, you'll see in the moment that they said, I love you, what you were actually present to was your own love for them. Now, if you again look in your life, you'll find there's occasions when people have said, I love you, and you didn't experience anything. In fact, for some of you, if you've had issues with certain people in your life and they say, I love you, you often experience resentment or upset or, you know, you might not always say it, but you'll experience it.

That is, you can't experience that communication, you can't experience their love for you because you are not in the presence of your love for that person. Now what does that tell you? Well it tells you that love is a generated phenomenon, that is, it's something I'm doing. It also tells me that love is not an outside-in phenomenon but rather it's the other way around.

It's inside out. That is, I have to be in the presence of my love for you to receive your love. So I want you to try it out this week. I want you to try it out for yourself. Being in the presence of that is getting yourself connected to your love for people, the people in your life. And especially in those moments when they say, I love you. I want you to be present to it, like be there in the moment with it.

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