DON'T MAKE EXCUSES - Breakthrough Motivational Speech for 2025
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When people get into a comfort zone, they strive to stay in that comfort zone even if they're unhappy with their situation.

Often their whole lives pass them by while they're furnishing and reinforcing their little rut of medium performance. The world owes you nothing. The world doesn't think you're special like your mom does. It doesn't think you're a delicate little flower. It doesn't care about you. Now, with that being said, the world doesn't hate you. It doesn't want you to fail. It just is.

Your comfort zone is irrelevant. What matters is what are you trying to do with your life? Future you is going to give you advice on what to stop, what to start, on what a more courageous action would be. What's the first thing they would tell you to be or do to be more courageous? See, if you're going to put in a day, just put in the whole day. And if you're going to take some time off, take it all off. Take the whole day off. If you're going to work a day, work a good, long, hard day. You're going to play, play, play all day.

Either work all day or play all day. And those are the times when you want to run and hide. You got to be able to find energy. You got to make up games, make up tricks, make up whatever you can to get to the next evolution of life. If you want all these things in life and you're just thinking that by some miracle of life, it's going to magically happen, you got to wake up.

The only way to get what you want in life is to get to work and go and get it. To look at all your adversity and all the excuses square in the face and push yourself out of your comfort zone to achieve what you want. I'm letting you know that you've got to make the opportunity happen. You've got to be fired up. You've got to be hungry for it. You've got to have the desire to push yourself.

We do not retreat. We do not give up. We do not surrender. And the reason why most of you are not successful is because every single time stuff not going your way, you give up, you quit, you let go. And people feel weakness. They feel it. You can feel when somebody's not committed, when they're not all in, when they're not dedicated. I want you to focus on what's going to make you better and not make you weak. I want you to focus on moving forward and not moving back.

I want you to focus on making your life greater and not making it weaker. I want you to focus on doing something that's going to make other people better. I want you to shine bright. I want you to lift people up. I want you to stay productive. I want you to stay strong. And I want you to keep living the life that you've been given. If you quit, if you never start climbing, if you never take that first step, you'll never get there.

and you'll forever live in regret. Just know that if you keep climbing, if you keep learning how you can get to the next level, you will soon be exactly where you need to be. - I like the saying, always strive to get on top in life because it's the bottom that's overcrowded. - There's so many individuals out there that are so talented in different things that never accomplish anything. The world is filled with talented people. You know a lot of them yourselves.

and they never accomplish anything. With talent has to come preparation, has to come action, has to become development of being able to take risks

And it doesn't stop.

if you don't make it stop. So, recognize the excuses are not valid. They aren't. They're trumped up. They're conjured up. They're fabricated. They're lies. And how do you stop the lies? You stop the lies with the truth. And the truth is, you have time. You have the skill. You have the knowledge and the support and the willpower and the discipline to get it done.

If you are alive, you have another opportunity to begin again. A new opportunity. Get up and get after it. If you have a dream, don't just sit there. Get your ass up and make something happen. Sometimes you just have to move. Do something. Make a call. Reach out to someone. Google something. Learn something new. Write down what you need to do in order to make a better life for yourself.

and be brave enough to do those things. And I know seeking discomfort sounds odd, not many people do it, but you have to learn to embrace it because it's the only environment where sustained or exponential growth can occur.

And in order to change, in order to build a business, in order to be the best parent, the best spouse, to do all those things that you know you want to do with your life, with your work, with your dreams, you're going to have to do things that are difficult, uncertain or scary, which sets up this problem for all of us. So continue to grind, grind with everything you got. Be strong every day of your life.

No matter what comes your way, keep grinding. Men, women are made in the image of God. And what does that mean? Well, if God is that which confronts potential with truth and courage and makes what's good out of potential, that seems to indicate that we have the same faculty. Like on a smaller scale, we're not omniscient, but we're not bloody well, nothing. Our conscious is integrally tied into the structure of being in some manner we don't understand.

And it certainly is the case that we take what isn't and turn it into what is. That's something, man. That's quite the trick we've been able to manage. And so we're made in that image. And so what are we supposed to do?

Well, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to type our letters and make our phrases and construct our sentences and build our paragraphs and put our chapters together and make our books and communicate to people and straighten out the damn culture and constrain the malevolence and ignorance that besets each of us and push nature back and

and extend ourselves out into the unknown and confront the potential that's there in the illimitable quantities and make the world better than it could be otherwise to move it away from hell, which and it can certainly become that and toward heaven to the degree that we can manage that. And that is a good enough goal. That's the thing.

You need something, you know, because your life is tough. It's hard. You need something that you know you need something to get out of bed for and fight for. And then think about maybe that's something you could contribute to. Then it wouldn't have to happen anymore. And that would be a good thing. God only knows what great things we could manage under such conditions. We're becoming incredibly technologically powerful. What would it be like if we became equally wise? Well, that would really be something.

God only knows what we could manage in the next 20 years or the next 100 years. We're running at 40% most of us because we're half in and half out. And it's not surprising because life is difficult. What if you were 90% in or 95% in or are all in because you're all in anyways, right?

It's a life and death game. No one gets out of this. Everyone dies. And you might as well commit yourself to the highest good that you can attain, because why not? It'll imbue your life with meaning. It's hard. The responsibility is there, but all the meanings in the responsibility, and that'll make your life better, and it'll make your family's life better, and it should make your culture better. Maybe it would make the world better. It's like

That'll justify your damn miserable existence at 03:00 in the morning when you're wondering what the hell you're doing here. And that's a good thing, because there's going to be days when you're aching and tired and sore, and there's people in your family that are sick and you're cynical and bitter, and you need a reason to get up and you think, yeah, well, a little more heaven and a little less hell. Maybe I can pull that off today and tomorrow and next week. That's worth struggling forward for. And so that's how it looks to me.

So if you want to do something, if you thought about something you want to do, take it head on. Decide that you're going to start looking at it. Start doing research on it. Start tackling it. Start becoming involved in whatever and wherever it might lead you to begin to explore the possibilities in that particular thing that you're seeking so that you can begin to learn all you can about it.

Decide that you face it, that whatever shortcomings you have, that you're going to strengthen yourself there. Whatever training that's required, that you're going to go get that training, that you're going to get started right now. That George Washington Carver would say, "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, and never be satisfied. Always strive to be more than that which you are. Don't get satisfied with yourself."

Always know that wherever you are, you can enjoy more, that you deserve more. But most people, you know what they do. Most people go through life quietly and safely, tiptoeing to an early grave. Find out what it is you want and go after it as if your life depends on it. Why? Because it does.

Your ability and willingness to discipline yourself to accept personal responsibility for your life are essential to happiness, health, success, achievement, and personal leadership.

Accepting responsibility is one of the hardest of all disciplines, but without it no success is possible. The failure to accept responsibility and the attempt to foist responsibility for things in your life that make you unhappy onto other people, institutions and situations completely distort cause and effect, undermine your character, weaken your resolve, and diminish your humanity. They lead to

to making endless excuses.

There is a direct relationship between the acceptance of responsibility and the amount of personal control you feel you have over your life. This means that the more you accept responsibility, the greater sense of control you experience. There's also a direct relationship between the amount of control you feel you have and how positive you feel. The more you feel that you have a high sense of control in the important areas of your life, the more positive and happy you are in everything you do.

When you accept responsibility, you feel strong, powerful, and purposeful. Accepting responsibility eliminates the negative emotions that rob you of happiness and contentment. In every situation, the antidote to negative emotions is to say, I am responsible. Then look into the situation to find the reasons why you're responsible for what happened or for what is going on.

Your intelligence is like a double-edged sword. It can cut in either direction. You can use your intelligence to rationalize, justify, and blame other people for things you're not happy about. Or you can use your intelligence to find reasons why you're responsible for what happened and then take action to solve the problem or resolve the situation. You can make excuses or you can make progress. I have two rules for setting goals.

By following these rules, you will achieve a great deal and become more than you ever could have imagined. Here's the first rule. Don't set your goals too low. In leadership training, we teach a similar guideline. Don't join an easy crowd. You won't grow.

Go where the expectations are high. Go where the demands are high. Go where the pressure is to perform, to grow, to change, to read, to study, to develop new skills. I belong to a small group of people that conducts business around the world. You would not believe what we expect of each other in terms of excellence.

Why? So that we can each grow. So that we can contribute something unprecedented to the benefit of the group. It's called living at the summit. Go where the demands are high. Go where the expectations are so strong that they motivate you, push you, urgently insist that you not remain in the same place. That way you will grow and change.

So don't set your goals too low. What about the guy who says, "Well, I don't need much." He is guaranteed not to become much. Here's rule number two for setting goals. Don't compromise. Don't sell out. There were some things back in the early years for which I paid too big a price. If I had known how much it was gonna cost me, I never would have paid that price.

but I didn't know it at the time. Don't sell out and as the old saying goes, count the costs. Remember in that ancient story, Judas got the money. That sounds like a success story and it is true that 30 pieces of silver in those days was a sizable fortune. But having a name that is synonymous with traitor is not what I would call a success story. Interestingly enough,

When Judas got the money after becoming a trader, he was unhappy. He wasn't unhappy with the money. He was unhappy with himself. You see, the greatest source of unhappiness doesn't come from the outside world. The greatest source of unhappiness comes from within. To alleviate his unhappiness, Judas tried to return the money, but no one would take it back. So he decided to just throw the money away. Why would he throw his fortune away?

because he was so unhappy with himself. Of course, that wasn't the end of the scenario. Throwing his fortune away did not change what Judas had become: a traitor. In total frustration, he hung himself. Why did Judas have such a tragic end? Because he was so unhappy with himself. He sold out. He paid too big a price. Don't compromise your values. Don't compromise your virtue. Don't compromise your philosophy.

There are two words from ancient scripture you need to keep in mind. The first is beware. This is the negative word. Be aware of what you become in pursuit of what you want. Don't sell out. Indeed, if Judas were to advise us today, he would tell us to beware. The second word behold is the positive one. Behold the possibilities and the opportunity. Behold the drama. Behold the awesomeness. Behold the uniqueness. Behold the majesty.

What a positive word. Behold, set the kind of goals that will transform your life. That will make you far better than you are, far stronger than you currently are. And you will behold,

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