Discipline Is Everything—And Most People Will Never Get It Motivational Speech
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I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Nothing. Nelson Mandela said, there is no passion to be found playing small and settling for a life that's less than the one you're capable of living.

Now I'm sure in your experiences in school and applying to college and picking your major and deciding what you want to do with life, I'm sure people have told you to make sure you have something to fall back on. Make sure you got something to fall back on, honey. But I never understood that concept, having something to fall back on. If I'm going to fall, I don't want to fall back on anything. I want to fall forward. I figure at least this way I'll see what I'm going to hit. Without consistency...

You'll never finish. So do what you feel passionate about. Passionate about. Take chances. Don't be afraid to fail. There's an old IQ test with nine dots. And you had to draw five lines with a pencil within these nine dots without lifting the pencil. The only way to do it was to go outside the box. So don't be afraid to go outside the box. Don't be afraid to fail.

Think outside the box. Don't be afraid to fail big, to dream big. But remember, dreams without goals are just dreams. You can either live your dreams or live your fears. And I think the majority of people actually are not living their dreams, but are living their fears. So I want to ask you a question. What are your fears? What are you afraid of? What are you scared of?

Because we all have fear. We all have something that's blocking us, that's holding us back. And as we begin to look at life, what we realize is that the reason that most people are not living out their true potential, not doing all of the things that they would really like to do,

It's because of fear. When you face your fears, it's not as bad as you think it is. And when people tell you, I just can't do it, I can't handle it, I mean, really, really, really, I can't handle it, what they're envisioning is that they're not going to be. They're going to clock out like you're going to die.

Guess what? We all had occasions when we confronted our fears, we had to do something we felt uncomfortable with, we didn't want to do it, and we did not die. What you got to do to get the life that you want you to have, you got to put more air in your bubble. You got to blow your bubble up.

Expand yourself. Take yourself out your comfort zone. Do not live in your bubble. If you stay in your comfort zone, that's where you will fail.

So don't be afraid. You have nothing to fear guys. You already overcame all kinds of stuff. Get that goal, get that dream. And so I'm telling y'all you have come too far to quit now. You have invested too much to quit now. You have lost too much to quit now. Get a reward for your pain. Don't cry about it. Don't whine about it. Get a reward for it. I am constantly trying to find my new hundred percent.

Even though life gets at you, age gets at you, sickness may get at you. I have friends of mine who lost legs, who lost arms, who lost all kinds of stuff. And they call me and say, "Hey man, what am I gonna do now?" I said, "Well, it's up to you to find your new norm. It's up to you to find your new 100%. No, you cannot do some of the things you used to do. But what can you do today? What can you do now with what you have? And you must find your new norm."

As you all know, your mom has a cookie jar, and sometimes you might have an Oreo. Sometimes you might have a Chips Ahoy. Sometimes you might have an oatmeal raisin cookie. You never know. It's just in there. My cookie jar has every single failure and success of my life, except my overcame. So what happens in time of life when you're stressed out and things get bad, even the hardest guy in the world,

Me, everybody thinks, and I think I'm the hardest guy in the world. You got to believe that. You got to believe you are something. I will, in my mind, reach into my cookie jar. And sometimes you forget how hard you are in times of need. Because you're stressed. But you forget, I'm a Navy SEAL. I'm a Ranger. I'm this and that. But you forget all that because your life sucks. I calm down, take that one second, get control of my life, reach in the cookie jar,

"Well, you got called nigger your whole life and you're now the only person in history to do this, this and this." Put it back in the cookie jar, reset my mind. You have to remind yourself of how badass you really are in times of need. That's the cookie jar.

No one has the most of everything. So when you measure yourself by numbers, you'll always be second, third, fourth, fifth in something. And I think by measuring yourself by needing to have the most of anything is probably a recipe for unhappiness. Like, well, okay, I'm not going to have the most of anything, but I'm going to have the most money. You're still going to be unhappy. Totally. Even if you have the most of something, it doesn't mean you're going to be happy. Totally. I think it was Albert Einstein who said it best that

Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. And I love that because it removes this belief that things are finite and limited and they're not. If you want to be happy and successful, no matter that there are 700,000 podcasts, if that is your dharma, if that's your calling, if that's your purpose,

Like, you can do that. There's no cap on how many successful soccer players that can exist at the same time. Or how many books are out in the world. There's no cap. There's no one stopping you. And that's the mindset that we're educated for that scarcity and greed. And what's the difference between the monkey mind and the monk mind? Yeah.

I'm glad you brought that up. So the monkey mind is what we experience on a day-to-day basis. The monkey mind is restless. The monkey mind is jumping from branch to branch. The monkey mind is trying to find a bigger banana. The monkey mind is constantly just like feeling flustered, dissatisfied, scarce, and overthinking everything.

The monk mind is the exact opposite. The monk mind is calm and composed. The monk mind knows to be focused and aware. The monk mind knows. So everything in this book and everything that we're talking about is the transformation from the monkey mind that we experience to the monk mind. The monkey mind is almost the enemy to the monk mind. It's the opposite.

And how does someone who is living in a sense of scarcity, because there are people living in scarcity where they're unable to pay their bills, they're unable to provide food for their kids, they're single moms, they're stressed, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed. It's hard to get into a sense of abundance when you're in scarcity and stress. So how does someone find purpose

in chaos when they can't even get out of the thinking because they're just trying to survive. Yeah. So, beautiful question. My biggest answer is, first of all, I empathize with anyone who's been in that situation having

I can't ever say I've been in that situation in the same way, but I've experienced similar things. - You've seen a feeling in your life. - Yeah, in my own way. And I've seen my mom go through stuff like that. I know that my mom worked really hard to raise me and my sister while working, while running around. And I've seen my mom be that incredible powerhouse of a person.

And the main thing I would say is what you can do right now is find meaning in what you do. Make what you do meaningful, passionate and purposeful. You don't need to suddenly look to become an entrepreneur or start a side hustle or find some more time. Find meaning. And the way you find meaning is you genuinely stop, press pause for a second and go, what am I living for?

Like what am I living for right now? And if you're living for your child and if you're living to provide and put food on the table, that is a beautiful thing that we should celebrate more. And sometimes it takes us a moment to stop and celebrate that. And so I would say find meaning because you can't always find happiness. You can't always find positivity, but you can always find meaning in that position. So I'll give an example. Like I lost someone really important to me, a mentor a few days back.

I can't be positive about that. You can't be happy about that. Yeah. It's hurtful. You feel sad. You feel lost. But guess what? I can find meaning in it because I can make a list of every lesson he taught me and make a plan to try and live every one of those lessons. Wow, that's beautiful. And so if you're in a really tough situation right now, don't look for positivity. Don't look for happiness. Look for meaning. That's a good one.

not trying to get yourself out of pain too quickly or discomfort or frustration, which I've been a guilt of being like, I'll just be positive or whatever to people. But I think it's like, you know, have your experience, live your experience and find meaning as quickly as possible. And yeah,

create a commitment to how you want to use that meaning moving forward. Okay, I may not be great tomorrow, maybe not next week, next month, but I'm going to use this meaning to serve other people, to continue to do what I love, continue to be great to my friends, my family in the best way possible.

I think there are people who would be born with what I would call leadership leanings. They would have a tendency to lean or be gifted in that area, just like somebody's gifted in music or whatever. So I think that that starts it, and I think I have that. But then I grew up in a leader's home.

In fact, my father is 98, still living. Whoa. And in fact, until two years ago, was still working full time and was a terrific leader. So I grew up in a culture and environment of leadership. And so...

When I look at myself where I am today, so much of it was caught from not only my father, but I've had great mentors throughout my life. In fact, while we're out here in Los Angeles, every time I come out here, I think of John Wooden, who mentored me for the last probably 11 years of his life. And in fact, when you talked about the sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, he did the forward on that book.

And he just loved the idea of how to get back up after you fail. So when you look at my home background, the leadership experiences that I had, because a person learns to lead by practicing leadership. And at a very early age, I was practicing leadership. And so it all comes together. And then when I began to realize everything rises and falls on leadership,

I became really intentional, Tom, of developing my leadership skills. So I can remember, for example, I was probably, I don't know, maybe 26. I heard Earl Nightingale say on a tape that if you had spent one hour a day every day on one subject for five years, you could become an expert on that subject. So I said, wow, I want to become an expert today.

In leadership. So for the next five years, you know, I spent an hour every day reading about leadership, talking to leaders, asking leaders questions, practicing leadership, but it really was consistent. And when I started that process, I was thinking five years, Earl Michael said I could become an expert in five years. Okay, wow, leadership expert, hello. And so I kept, you know, I was kind of like doing countdown, five years, four years, three years. I'm thinking I'm Kate Canaveral, okay. But something happened to me about halfway through that five-year process.

Instead of asking myself, how long will it take? How long will it take? How long will it take? 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.

We spend a lot of time talking about mindset from the standpoint of think positive so positive things happen. And I do believe in having a positive mindset, obviously. I think that the actions that you take are way more important in terms of developing that mindset. But we don't spend enough time on what you were just talking about, which is understanding how the automatic nature of worrying about stuff

all day long, how that is making you less money, how it is making you less happy, how it is disconnecting you from your spouse, how it is keeping you unhealthy, and how it is a habit that robs you of joy and opportunity and power. And it is one of the easiest habits to break. Number one, your life happens in five second windows. Number two,

In five seconds, you can control what you think, you can decide what you're going to do, and you can change absolutely anything, which changes absolutely everything. And so the five-second rule is a mind trick. That's all that it is.

a fancy way to call it is a form of metacognition. But it's basically a hack. It's a cheat code. And the way that it works, and this is the challenge with getting it out there, is that it sounds so profoundly stupid, like a gimmick, that it took a while for people to actually take it seriously. I get that. And to really stack up the science to make it

you know, anybody that interacts with it go, holy, like this actually works. Yeah. So here's what it is. Basically, the moment you catch yourself hesitating or doubting or starting to worry or about to chicken out or shrink or shut up or whatever it is that you're about to do that is shrinking your power, you just go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

What happens when you do that? Don't do it out loud because it'll scare somebody. Like a psycho. I'm talking. Yes, exactly. My turn. Yes, exactly. Although, you know, I say it's so simple that people use it with their kids. This is a Saturday Night Live skit in the making right here. I can see that. I would love that because that means I've really made it. True. Yeah.

Your kids will use it on you. So my kids will use it on me. So if I have a certain tone that comes out, I'll hear my child go five, four, three, watch that tone, mom. Or mom, five, four, three, two, one, I thought you were going to go to the gym. Yes. So by counting backwards, the kind of cheat code that you're doing in your mind is you are interrupting what are called habit loops that get encoded in the central part of your brain.

and you are starting up the prefrontal cortex. It's a little trick that causes focus, and it's a lot like having a mantra, because you're shifting gears, but the thing about having a mantra is, and I suppose that as you count backwards more and more and more, you become used to it, but it becomes a habit that triggers action. So what you do is go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, cut off this part of the brain, awaken this part of the brain, and then move. And what happens with the counting backwards is,

There's nowhere to go after one. And your mind is socialized in a countdown situation to go. And so counting up won't work because you can keep going. And you do it in many aspects of your life, so it's actually not something that requires any focus. At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our FlexPath learning format.

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