Discipline Or Regret—What Will You Choose Today? Motivational Speech
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Life is hard. See, for every time you have a plan, a dream, an aspiration or a goal, do you know what happens every time you have one of those? This thing comes along called life. It happens to everybody. Life has disappointments. It's got peaks and valleys. You're going to lose somebody you care about one day.

That's a valley. Somebody gonna close the plant you thought was gonna stay open so you could retire. That's a valley. Somebody gonna fire you for an unjust cause. That's a valley.

The people that got your credit card gonna sell they company, gonna sell they business to another credit card company. Your 18% go up to 26%. You don't even know why now your minimum didn't change. Because it's life. We all face opposition and things that come against us. It's easy to get discouraged and give up on what we're believing for.

Sometimes we feel alone, like nobody knows what we're going through. Nobody is supporting us. We get weary and faint in our mind. That's the problem with some of you. You always want to blame other people. You always want to hold other people to the fire, but you're not holding yourself to the fire. You just said you give it 50%. You owe you an explanation. You owe you an explanation. You need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, why are you only giving 50%? What's wrong with you?

See a lot of people allow fear to stop them from living their dream. Answer your calling. Whatever you're called to do.

Don't count yourself out. Don't say I can't do that. Many of us go through life saying no and you don't even know what you're saying no to. You don't know what you cannot do. And if you create a culture of losing, if you keep being a victim, if you keep letting losing happen to you, if you keep letting people do you and treat you any kind of way, it's going to become a culture. See, this is the only life you've got.

So you don't want to squander it doing something you don't want to do, feeling you can't do any better. You can do better. You should do better. You deserve to do better. You are entitled to that. That is your right to do better. True change comes from you. The only change that's going to happen, it comes from all of us. It comes from you. If you keep learning all the time, you have a huge advantage. And we both just like it. And we have a wonderful group of friends.

Really wonderful. We should look at the greatest achievers who've ever walked among us, know that they all came from the same intelligence and recognize and help people to find that within themselves.

Self-actualizing people. The number one quality and characteristic of these people who live at the apex, self-actualization, who are way beyond just taking care of their biological needs, who are way beyond their social needs, who are way beyond needing to be loved and so on. These are people who came here with a purpose.

These are people who have a dharma. These are people who won't let anyone else determine what it is they're going to be. The number one quality of these people is that they are independent of the good opinion of other people. They listen to an inner voice. The question is, how willing are you to pay attention? How willing are you to listen to that inner voice that no one else can hear? That little scurvy elephant in there that says, "You're not the boss of me. You can't tell me what I'm here for."

It takes a kind of fearlessness because fear is such an omnipresent force in our lives. I do what I do because of the passion I feel. I am not here because of what you paid me to be here for. I am not here because of any need that I have to sell another book. I am not here for anything external to myself. I am here because I have a passion within me. You develop your gifts.

Your gifts will take you places that you'll never begin to imagine. Decide that you're going to work with it until it gives you the blessing that you want and don't let up on it. Just keep right on working it and working it and working it and knowing that whatever you do, you can better your best, that you can get better at it, that whatever you are achieving right now, it's only a tip of the iceberg of what's possible for you. Your brain is your lead. If you take the lead off...

The potential in every one of us is expansive. It's unbelievable. Imagination is everything. It's the preview to life's coming attractions. You know what that means? Everything was once a thought. That's what that means. Let your imagination go. Open up your mind. Trip a little bit. Be something extra. Folks, if imagination is everything, why not use yours? The possibilities in your life are endless, man.

Albert Einstein said once, he said, imagination is everything. It's the preview to life's coming attractions. I want you to get this now. Imagination is everything. It's the preview to life's coming attractions. Because if you think about it, everything you have, everything we have in this world, somebody imagined it.

It's your imagination is tremendous. Somebody was sitting on the phone when they talked with a cord to the wall and said, man, I wish I could just go outside with this phone. Everybody in here got a cell phone.

Somebody imagine that. Somebody got tired of riding in a wagon across country from slavery to freedom. Somebody said, "I wish we had something that made these wheels move by themselves." We drive cars. People got tired of driving from New York to LA. Somebody said, "I wish we could fly." We got airplanes. Imagination is everything. It's the preview to life's coming attractions. Your real life, the one God really got for you, is in your imagination.

It is not in your current situation or your current paycheck and if you've been living like that you have then restricted yourself to a commonality that is really not yours because what really God got for you is really in your imagination. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So when I told you a minute ago you got to have a tremendous work ethic but you got to have a lot of faith. I talked to so many people who get

who get older like some of us are and they've lost the faith. Well, faith is really simple. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. All that means is in the beginning, you just hope something pop off. You know, you just kind of hope something happen for you. I was hoping I would get on TV. I wrote it on a piece of paper when I was 10. I want to be on TV. The problem I had when I wrote it at 10 was I suffered from a severe stuttering problem.

I could not talk outside of my house. So can you imagine when I wrote on a piece of paper, I want to be on TV and turn that in. The first thing the little boy next door next to me asked me, he did. Well, how long is your TV show going to be? You're going to be on TV all day. But when I wrote it on the paper, it wasn't factual. I was just hoping. You just got to start with the hope.

Faith is the substance of things that you hope for. You just hope something, Joe. Then what happened is through grace and favor, he give you a couple of them things you hope for. And then you're supposed to start believing then because now it turns into faith. But if you take this scripture, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. What is the evidence of things not seen? I just told it. Albert Einstein said, imagination is everything.

It's the preview to life's coming attraction. But guess what? Your imagination really is. It's the evidence of things not seen. Because your imagination, you know why it's the evidence of things not seen? Because you're the only one who can see it.

Your imagination is actually God showing you a preview of a coming attraction that he has for you. The moment you don't believe in your imagination, you negate what he got for you. Imagination is the preview to life's coming attraction. It is the evidence of things not seen because can't nobody see it with you. Your problem is you keep telling your imagination to the wrong people.

See, if you want to kill a big dream, tell it to a small-minded person. It's dead. How many times, man, have you had a tremendous idea? Something you thought was the one and you went and told it to your loved ones and your so-called friends and they shot it down.

I mean, you was convinced that it was just, oh man, I just came to you. And you told it to them and they shot it down. And you thought since they was your loved ones and they're friends and they got your best interests at heart, you believed them. You was wrong. You let them talk you out of what God got for you. Some of y'all still sitting here with the ambition of opening a business one day, but you scared to go start the business because you got a job and you got bills. Rich people got bills.

Everybody got bills. Hell, I got bills. You who? Everybody owe somebody something. I got something with the bank right now. You're going to let the fact that you got some bills stop you from opening the business, the thing that God done put in your imagination? So you're going to squash that because you got bills. Everybody got bills. Your real life is in your imagination.

Christie talked about affirmations abundant thinkers understand the power of I am Anything after the word I am is true to your unconscious mind Michael anything anything after I am anything Anything after I am even if you just you know, it's not true your conscious mind will believe it anything after I am so the use of affirmations is very intentional and very consistent and

I was diagnosed as clinically depressed in 1998. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed. Me, it didn't make sense. I had been in a relationship. I was engaged to get married. And my fiance, who I did not know at the time, was bipolar. And he stopped taking his medicines under the belief system that love can cure anything. And so I ended up being picked up and thrown three feet across the room.

And I ended up being choked until I passed out. And once I got out of that relationship, I just was different. It was different. So my mom insisted that I go to the doctor. I went to the doctor and I sat on the table and she checked me and talked to me and came back in with a prescription. And she said, "Lisa, you're clinically depressed."

And I felt like I heard Charlie Brown's parents talking like, "Womp womp, womp womp, clinically depressed and Lisa... that don't make sense in that same sentence." And she handed me a prescription and I read the prescription and it had my name on it and it said Prozac. And I thought, "That don't make sense. Lisa Nichols Prozac, that don't make sense." And I said, "Do you mean I'm sad?"

She said, very, very sad. I said, can I try something? And I'm not recommending you guys, if you're on medication, you stop taking your meds. Please don't do that. I asked my doctor. She agreed. I said, do you mind if I try something before I take this? She goes, yes, but I need to see you back in 30 days. If you're in the same condition, I need us to try this medicine. I said, okay, I can do that. So I went home and every day I got in the mirror and I drilled I am.

Every day. Because I realized I have forgotten who I was. I just forgot. And it was okay to forget. I just forgot. So every day, every day for 25 minutes, I just went over the I am's. Every

Every day I am, I am, I am. And then I parallel that with I forgive you for. Then I parallel that with I commit to you, Lisa, every single day. I went back in 30 days and I'm talking to her and I'm on fire. She's just looking at me. I'm just talking, talking. She twisted her head again. And I'm just talking, talking. She says, wait, I got to stop you. I said, what? She goes, what are you taking? And can I have some? I was like, I'm taking some of me.

And so the power of I am, the power of I am can pull you through the darkest moment. The power of I am. Switzerland, there are some mountains that can be climbed by people like you and me. We got to get a little bit better condition, but I mean, it's not like the mountain climber mountains that would be way beyond our skill level. But some of these mountains that can be climbed by you and me, it takes a day to get to the top and then you camp up there and you come down the next day.

On many of these places where you in Switzerland where you could do that About halfway up the mountain is what they call the halfway house halfway house halfway up the mountain So the group of people starts off with the guy in the morning and about noon You're kind of tired You've been walking now for four or five hours and here comes the year coming up to the halfway house It is just a it's it's a wonderful sight. I

Because as soon as you enter in the halfway house, you can smell the food and they're getting ready for a good lunch. And you sit down, there's a fire in the fireplace and there's nice soft chairs and you can just rest your body and refresh your body. And so the people go into the halfway house and they eat and laugh and enjoy and just really, really just kind of take in that wonderful refreshing atmosphere.

About an hour and a half after being in the halfway house, the guide gets up and says, well, gang, it's time to put on your gear. We got to hike. We got to get on up to the top. This is a fact. About half the people decide not to go on up to the top.

They're sitting around the table and they're just saying, you know what? Go on up. You're going to come by here tomorrow. You're going to be having lunch here again tomorrow. We're just going to hang here. And so the people that want to get to the top, they put their stuff on and they kind of leave. And the rest of the people sitting behind, they eat a little bit more food, get around the piano, sing some songs, get around the fireplace, enjoy the fire, warm themselves by the fire. And all have to play games all afternoon, kind of enjoy themselves. But about 4.30, quarter to 5 in the afternoon, without anybody watching,

saying a word. The people who stayed in the halfway house, they slowly go over to where the window is, the big window, and they start looking outside and they start looking up at the top of that mountain. And as they look at the top of that mountain, they see their friends. Their friends are now getting the tents out and they're getting ready to prepare for the night. And it becomes very quiet, very somber because everybody in the halfway house realizes the mistake they've made. They've

They've sold their mission for a little bit of comfort for a few hours.

Next morning, down come their friends, and by noon, they come into the halfway house. And when they come in the halfway, they are laughing, they're high-fiving, they're talking about what they've seen, where they've been, experiences, the fact that it was almost impossible to get up there. In fact, they had to help each other get up there and how they joined teams and held hands. And they just tell them all these stories and talk about the pictures they've taken. And yeah, they got the group picture up there with the flag at the top. And the people who remain behind, they don't say much. They just eat their lunch.

and then follow the rest of them down to the bottom of the hill where their friends are waiting for them. And those who paid the price and went to the top, who understood now is the time to reach the mission, they hug and tell stories and celebrate. And the others, they just kind of slip off and get in their car and go home because they realize they're never going to be what they wanted to be. They're never going to see what they wanted to see. They're never going to do what they wanted to do.

because they fail to realize when they're at the halfway house, now's the time to rest and then go on.