Pain is something that's unavoidable in life. Suffering is not unavoidable. Suffering is of our choosing. Pain causes suffering when human beings allow it to.
Great leaders challenge people. Great people challenge themselves. Without a challenge, I have found most people suffer. Have you ever thought about that before?
That maybe the root of some of the suffering you're going through is not that the challenge or the pain you're going through is too great. But that you have not challenged yourself in a way to grow that can offset or augment the challenge you're going through. I believe a human being with a challenge, with a mission, with a cause, with a crusade, is somebody who is not going to suffer.
Isn't that ironic? You show me somebody who's on fire about their mission, and I'll show you somebody who's going to be successful. The answers you're looking for are in your commitment to your passion, in your commitment to your mission.
And your commitment to a challenge. Those are where the answers are. Every day you get up, you go, my gosh, I walk into a fire every day and now you're telling me to take on another challenge?
Ed, my gosh, every day my business is melting down. Then maybe your challenge is to say, I'm going to build the mental toughness and the resistance. That when I walk in there every day, I say, God and I are partnering up.
I got this. I'm built for this. I'm getting through this.
Because on the other side of this pain, this company is going to be better. I'm going to be a better leader. I'm going to get wealthier.
I'm going to help more people. Our company is going to expand. Our mission as a company is not going to die because of what we're going through right now. I am bigger.
God is bigger than this obstacle I'm going through right now. And bring it. Maybe that's your challenge. Welcome back to the show everybody.
So excited about this week's topic because we're going to talk about challenging yourself, mental toughness, and asking ourselves the question of whether or not we are suffering in comfort. And I know that sounds like an odd phrase and maybe it's even counterintuitive, but I believe more people right now are suffering in comfort than at any time in the history of the world. Meaning that people that live relatively comfortable lives are still suffering on a constant basis. And I want to unpack why that might be.
And I want to talk to you about your mental toughness, if that doesn't apply to you, and challenging yourself today. And again, when I cover things on the show, most of the time I'm covering topics that either you guys have asked about or that I need to cover myself. And I work through and you kind of share in the benefit, I guess, so to speak, of me working through these things after 53 years of being on this earth. So let's first talk about the distinction between pain and suffering because these terms are often used interchangeably. And I think people conflate them and get them wrong.
Pain is something that's unavoidable in life. Suffering is not unavoidable. Suffering is of our choosing.
I looked it up, and really the definition is pain is a physical sensation indicating an event within the body. It could be a mental event, physical event. Suffering is an interpretation of that event, and it involves thoughts, beliefs, and judgments that we make based on the pain we're feeling, and it reflects a human experience of pain.
So pain causes suffering when human beings allow it to. And so what happens is we start asking ourselves questions that cause suffering when we're going through something painful. Why me?
This isn't fair. This is horrible. I can't stand it. So we ask questions.
We make statements. We use words that make it worse than it is. Words are very powerful. One of the things I did kind of a deep dive on recently in an audit of myself is my phrasing. And I can take situations, probably you can too, that are at one level, and just with the words I use, escalate it.
to a level that doesn't serve me, the people around me, my business partners, friends, family, etc. So look at the phraseology you use when you're experiencing pain. Do those words you use or the questions you ask yourself take it from pain to suffering, where you start asking these things that don't serve you, or using words to describe what you're going through that exaggerate it and now cause you to suffer?
And so sometimes we resist pain. And when I say resist, I don't mean that we necessarily fight it. Sometimes resistance to pain is...
the way in which we behave about it. We almost believe we are weaker than the situation we're going through. Does that make sense? That it's bigger than us. One thing I've learned in my life is that for you, the pain you're going through is never bigger than you.
It's never bigger than the God you serve. Whatever your faith beliefs are, very clearly you all know that I'm a Christian, but I can promise you whatever you're going through is never bigger than that. But there's some things we do in our lives that make us believe that that's true, and then it causes emotions that are terrible. We find ourselves trapped.
in a world of emotions like despair, anger, shame, unhappiness, and none of these things serve us. And so what happens is in the isolation of our minds, we sort of surrender and we live in some sort of suffering while we're in comfort. And so here we go today into some thoughts I have for you. I don't care if you're the CEO of a company, a professional athlete, a stay-at-home mom, a business person, a salesman. woman or man, these things all apply.
I believe that when you are comfortable, it actually can cause suffering in our lives. And I believe that people that are going through a difficult time, believe it or not, the mentally tough person, the person that gets themselves out of it, finds a challenge. They challenge themselves. By the way, those of you that are leaders in business, whether you're leading a family, you're leading a company of two or three or four people, or an enterprise of 25,000 people, I can tell you that great leaders challenge people. Great people challenge themselves.
And so without a challenge, I have found most people suffer. Have you ever thought about that before? That maybe the root of some of the suffering you're going through is not that the challenge or the pain you're going through is too great, but that you have not challenged yourself in a way to grow that can offset or augment the challenge you're going through. And so oftentimes, there's a lot of people that have got a good job, money's coming in, maybe the relationship's not great, or things aren't great with their family. There's a problem here or there, but they're just not happy.
They're just not joyous. They're just not blissful. They're not pumped up. They're not excited. And that's because you need a challenge.
You go, well, Ed, I got plenty of challenges, man. I lost my job or I'm going through a breakup right now. I have a challenge.
Here's what I'm telling you. I'm telling you that if you find a healthy challenge, that it will override the emotions. And although you may go through some pain, you won't suffer. And so I believe a human being with a challenge, with a mission, with a cause, with a crusade, any one of the above is somebody who is not going to suffer.
Isn't that ironic? But if you look at some of the happiest times in your life, it's when you were the most challenged. When you look back on it, man, that's when I grew the most, that you got something for your pain.
And what you got from it wasn't suffering. You got growth, insight, idea, relationship, a new you, a new emotion. a toughness, a resiliency that you needed to get through the next thing in your life.
And so mission one today is to convince you that I want you to find a challenge for yourself right now and to stay mentally tough and to push through it. If you're a leader in business, evaluate, are you challenging the people around you enough? If you're leading a family, if you're a mom or a dad, when's the last time you challenged your kids to do something great? Maybe not just their grades, but maybe it's something physical. Maybe it's to read a Bible scripture and report to you on it.
Human beings love to be challenged, especially the great ones. You know, when I was an athlete, I was always surprised by guys that didn't want to be coached hard by the coach. I wanted to be coached hard. I wanted to be challenged. It was a chance for me to get recognized.
See, when you challenge people, you create an opportunity and a space that didn't exist before it to get recognized, for them to get significance, for them to be acknowledged, to be seen. So as a leader, you have to regularly be challenging people. Let me tell you something that they're not telling you, the people that work with you or your children. or your friends. They want you to challenge them.
That creates a space where they can say, hey, I did it, man. We did it. I grew. So not only do they grow, not only do they expand, but in many ways, they have a chance to get recognized.
And most people don't feel seen. And so they suffer in quiet anonymity. They suffer in invisibleness because no one's challenging them. And worse, they're not challenging themselves. And so actually, there was an article that just came out yesterday I was reading from a publication that said that people's obsession with being great is why they're suffering.
And I have to tell you, I just completely disagree with that. Greatness may be the pursuit of money could lead to something empty, potentially. But are you telling me someone who's challenged to want to get in better physical shape, that that's contributing to them being suffering, to their depression?
No, it's not. Someone who's challenged to grow emotionally, to grow intellectually. to grow in a new hobby, a new talent, a new behavior.
More and more, our culture, the world is trying to tell you, conform, be average, be like everybody else, blend in, join a group. People love groups right now, don't they? Don't people love groups? Because they can hide in that group. They love political groups.
I'm this, I'm that. They love groups, clubs they belong to. Anything they can do to hide in a group is what people love, to conform.
I believe... The opposite of courage is to conform. The opposite of bravery is to be a conformist.
I love contrarian people. I love weird people. Remember this, weird, rich, normal, poor.
And I don't mean just money, although I do mean money. Most of my rich friends financially are a little bit weird, a little bit crazy. They got that thing where they want to be challenged. They want to be great.
They want to grow. They want to expand. As I say often, I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. And every time I've tried to just be comfortable, which is what the world tells you, be comfortable. Just settle.
Every time I've done that, there's a part of me that says, no, Eddie, you're supposed to do something great with your life. You're supposed to grow. You're supposed to help people.
When you feel the most helpless, get the most helpful, expand, grow. And I don't believe I'm in any form of suffering when I do that. It may be painful. It may be painful to grow, painful to change, painful to go through a difficult situation, painful to challenge yourself.
That's totally different than suffering. In fact, on the other side of pain, you ought to get something for your pain. I believe that all pain is temporary. So I remind myself of that.
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I think for a lot of people, they're chasing a... fame and money and celebrity and likes and all that does contribute to a great deal of pain. Whether they suffer is their choice when they don't get the likes or they don't get the money or when they do get the money if it doesn't fulfill them.
But don't conflate that with being challenged and not letting it grow you and expand you. You want to be challenged. You want to be recognized at least by you.
You want to make you proud of you. Maybe you want to make God proud of you. Maybe after that, you want to make your family proud of you. Maybe you want to make the world proud of you. There's nothing wrong with that.
The most important thing is that you and God say, hey, man, you're doing it right. Hey, lady, you're doing it right. And so what I want to submit to you today is, are you down right now?
Are you a little bit down? If you are, pick a new challenge. Challenge yourself.
Are you as mission-driven as you used to be or as you need to be? Is that mission almost pours out of you like you bleed your mission? And what is it?
If I asked you right now in two sentences, tell me your mission, your business mission. Can you give it to me? And if you gave it to me, would I feel something? Is it a crusade almost?
Is it so passionate that it bleeds out of you that you can't even stop thinking about it most of the time? When's the last time that you deeply, deeply, deeply connected to your mission? If you have employees or subcontractors or independent contractors that work with you, how much focus is there on the mission and the cause and the crusade? purpose.
See, I don't think that you can get down when you are focused on your mission and your cause and your crusade. But I think oftentimes all the mixed messaging that we get in our lives, right? You got to do this.
You got to make that. And it gets so busy and you lose the reason you exist. The reason you feel you were born. The reason you're doing what you do as a business person right now. And how infectious is it through your organization to your clients?
When people get around you, do they get this feeling? that if they could just latch onto you, their lives are going to change. See, great leaders challenge people.
And they challenge people because they're so passionate about the change they believe needs to happen in people's lives. They're so passionate about that change. Something needs to change. So what's the change?
Is it a change in you? Is it a change in your body? A change in your spirit?
A change in your motivation level? Your inspiration level? Is it a change in the difference you make to your clients every day? And when people get around you like, man, this lady's on fire about this, this dude is unbelievably passionate. And maybe it's not loud.
Maybe it's not even a spoken word. Maybe it's the written word. Maybe it's a look in your eye. But people got to get around you.
They got to get a feeling that this person's causing change. They're changing our family. They're changing our business.
They're changing our lives. You show me somebody who's on fire about their mission, and I'll show you somebody who's going to be successful. who's going to be happy.
But you show me somebody who starts to focus on the phone script or focus on their problems or focus on the challenge or focus on the market, and they lose focus of the whole reason they exist. This person's going to struggle. And so my reminder to you today is reconnect deeply, like a level you've never been at before with your purpose, your cause, and your mission. And if you don't know what it is, if you're sitting here and you're like, man, I, you know, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. You got to find it. You got to start to ask yourself the hard questions because let me say something. People are looking for leadership right now.
And by the way, that leadership may be in your family. It may be at the gym. It may be for one person. Maybe your friend, maybe for your team, maybe for your employees. People are looking for leadership.
They're looking for somebody to inspire them. They're looking for somebody to aspire to be like. They are. They're looking for you. And you think, I'm not all that I'm qualified.
The qualifications of doing something great is being deeply committed to your purpose and your mission. That's the quality that it's sincere, right? Like.
I got to be honest with you. The people that I follow in my life, they don't have to be perfect. They don't have to have all the answers, but I got to think, man, they love it.
They love their mission. They're so committed. They want to change something.
At the root of every mission, at the root of every challenge is a change. And when you change, miraculous things happen. And I got to believe there's something you want to change. Either it's in the world, a cause, a disease, a political thing. a group of people who are actually suffering that need to not suffer so deeply, something in you, something in your body, in your health, in your spirituality, in your mental wellness, the answers you're looking for are in your commitment to your passion, in your commitment to your mission, in your commitment to a challenge.
Those are where the answers are. The answers of other areas of your life will be found in the deep commitment you make to your overall mission as a man or a woman. A lot of other things get solved when you figure that out.
And what happens is we get into the isolation of our minds, the wrong phraseology, the wrong terminology. We make the story worse than it is. We magnify our problems to where we begin to suffer. I've said this many times. Nothing wrong with pain.
Nothing wrong with it. But it's the isolation of your mind. So I don't want you to be comfortable. I don't want comfort. In fact...
I'm going to say something crazy to you. Forget balance. Get a little wiggy, right? Like get a little like, wow, man, I'm something's changing.
Something's shifting. Something is shifting. And that shift will come with you being challenged to do something with your mission and your purpose and your cause. Connect deeper, go deeper with it.
Re-evaluate it. I don't know what that challenge is. Maybe it's a challenge to learn a brand new hobby. Like I think a lot of, you know, I'm learning about horses right now and riding. It's a challenge.
I'm a very busy person. I've got multiple businesses. I've got a show. I've got a podcast. I've got a TV show.
I speak quite a bit. I'm going through a significant health issue right now. I've got family. I have to manage relationships and money and growing and learning.
I've got a lot going on. Me to add something else to my life is an awful lot. But you know what? I feel like when I'm challenged and I'm growing, I'm happy. I can't suffer when I'm growing.
I'm in pain when I'm growing. When I'm in the gym and... You know, you're doing curls or bench or legs.
You all know this. You're in pain. But if you've done it any length of time, you can't wait to get the reward for it.
You can't wait to see your arms grow or your belly shrink or your legs get stronger or your ability to run and get faster grow, right? Like, and so that's painful. That's not suffering. And so I want to ask you, what's a challenge you could take on right now?
Is it something physical? I think one of the... greatest places to change your life is to take on a physical challenge.
Whatever that might be. It might be a challenge to get a certain body fat percentage, or lose some weight, or get stronger, or run an Ironman, or do a 5K, or walk longer than you normally walk. Whatever it might be, take on a physical challenge and compete for it. Maybe it's not that.
Maybe it's a challenge to read 30 books this year, or 50 books this year. Maybe it's a challenge to go see something. Maybe it's a challenge to get a certain amount of income.
Maybe it's a challenge to work solely on meditation and challenge yourself to meditate every single day. But a human being that's challenged is a happy human being. A leader that challenges people is a real leader, as long as they set the personal example. So what's that challenge for you?
And if it's not a challenge, what's a mission you could go on? What's a crusade? And I know a lot of you listening go, Ed, I've got a lot on the plate right now.
Okay, like I'm not lacking for stuff to do. You sure? Maybe you're just in the pursuit of external stuff all the time right now, aren't you? Maybe you're one of those.
I know I've been that person for 25 years. The pursuit of more wealth, the pursuit of more recognition, the pursuit of more growth, the pursuit of more business success. Hey guys, you're busy just like I am.
And one of the things that goes by the wayside is all the home maintenance stuff you're supposed to be focusing on. And let me tell you one of the things you don't want to mess up, which is your gutters or leaves getting in there. I have to tell you. Well, I messed up really, really bad when I owned a house in Idaho where I did not clean my rain gutters for an extended period of time.
And then a big storm hit. And then guess what? Blew out all of my gutters.
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Maybe you need a little yoga. Maybe you need a little more meditation. Maybe you need to give yourself a break of some type of a retreat you're going to give yourself a challenge to get on in the next six months where you go away for two or three days or a week on a retreat. Maybe the challenge for you is. your marriage isn't where you want it to be right now or your girlfriend or your boyfriend and you aren't as close as you need to be and you need to challenge yourself to pay a lot more attention to show them a lot more affection a lot more love to be a lot more present maybe that challenge for you is you're passionate about something right now and you need to get involved you know you have lost a loved one to cancer and you're doing nothing about it in the world and you go you know i'd like to do something about cancer or you know you've been a single mother for a while now and you know the difficulty of that and you'd like to do something to help single moms right maybe there's something in your faith that you just go i need to serve more i need to give more i need to be involved in the church more i need to do a mission this summer but a person with a challenge has a future a person without a challenge has no future you want a future there's a lot of talk in the world about being present and we all struggle with that but one of the ways that you can be fully present in a moment believe it or not, ironically, is having an optimistic future.
One of the reasons we struggle to be present in the present moment is our angst about the future. And so we live there all the time. Our despair about the future, our worry, our concern, our lack of clarity about it. Ironically, having a challenge or a mission or a cause or a crusade.
will allow you to be present right now because you know where you're going. And so you can enjoy the present moment. And that present moment can be about the people and the moments and the growth and the reading and the listening to me right now.
I know it sounds ironic because most of the people listening to my show are achievers. And you're saying, Ed, I need another challenge. What I'm suggesting to you is, A, number one, either you are suffering unnecessarily because of the pain you're going through and it's because of your language.
that you use you make it worse than it is the story you're telling yourself you're making it worse than it is or potentially it's the questions you're asking yourself about it they're the wrong questions maybe right now the pain you're going through is trying to teach you something and you're missing the entire lesson from it because you keep focusing on why it's unfair you got to change that and the way you change as you change the questions you're asking yourself change the way you look at pain successful and happy people have a different relationship with pain They understand they're going to get something for their pain. They understand God does not give you pain in your life so that on the other side of that temporary pain, he doesn't give you a permanent, beautiful gift. That gift can be a new friend, a new contact, a new relationship, a new lead, a new insight, a new mindset, a new emotion, a new thought, right?
A new bank account. It could be all kinds of different things. My dad's drinking when I was a little boy. He'd say, well, that's terrible that you had to go through the pain of that. And I allowed that.
that I suffered through because I was a little boy. I was defenseless. I didn't understand the things I'm telling you now. So I suffered while my dad was drinking.
It was also painful. But as a grown man now that when other people in my life let me down, it's painful, but I don't allow myself to suffer. I changed the questions I ask myself. I changed my perspective. I understand God's trying to teach me something right now.
I had a very close friend recently go through a very difficult bout with alcohol and drugs, a very close person, a friend of mine. And I thought gosh god you're bringing this back into my life again And I realized the reason that god brought that back into my life is i'm 100 equipped to help that person And the people around them because you're most qualified in life to help the people you used to be I know what it's like to have a loved one suffer or a friend suffer with drug addiction and alcohol And so rather than when that happened to be a suffering experience for me It was painful, but I didn't suffer because of my perspective about it, right? And so in life I got to tell you, your perspective, your phraseology matters. And I got to tell you something, as busy as you are right now, something needs to challenge you different than it is right now. Maybe it's eliminating a few things, but I think you need a challenge.
And my hallucination is for a lot of you, if it starts with your body and your physiology, it can impact all the other areas of your life. For me, people ask me all the time, how do you change your mental health? How do you change this?
How do you grow in business? How do you get your ideas for books, content? It's always with my body. Now, that's not true for everybody.
But for me, when I'm training hard, one of the reasons I think I've been a little bit down lately is this health issue I'm going through has caused me not to be able to train to the real capacity that I'm used to in the gym and to do some of the things I enjoy doing, like golfing and other things. I just, I can't do them right now. And so I think it's affected my mental health. For example, like walking and breath work and light resistance training for me. is really important. And because, and so I've got a challenge for me right now.
So I've actually created a challenge for me on my body weight and on my heart rate, ironically, and my HRV, my heart rate variability. So I've actually created some metrics. I'm challenging myself to get those better.
And that challenge is getting me to do something that all great people want to do to compete. And if you wrap all this in a bow, it's that a human being who's not competing, right? It's typically someone who's going to begin to suffer.
You got to compete for something. There's nothing wrong with that. You go, no, that's our culture. I'm not talking about trying to compete for the most likes or the most money.
Although if that's what you want, go get it. I'm talking about competing to the best version of you. I'm talking about in your DNA, your cellular structure wants to be challenged. The reasons muscle grow when they break down, you're supposed to do that.
You're supposed to go through the pain to grow them. The reason the mind expands when you challenge it is because it's how it's built. It's cellularly how you're built.
The reason that when you do crossword puzzles and read and do different things that engage your mind, it grows. That's how we're built. It needs to be challenged spiritually.
If you're not in whatever your scriptures are, if you're not challenging yourself to understand it deeper, if you're not asking for a deeper relationship with your creator, then you don't grow in that area and you begin to suffer. But so even if it's painful to go through these things, when you're going through the pain, you're growing. And so mentally tough people want this.
Mentally tough people want to always be challenged. So what's the challenge for you? Stop right now. Ask yourself, is it a spiritual challenge, a physical challenge, a mental challenge, an intellectual challenge, a business challenge, a wealth challenge, a brand challenge?
What is it, right? But there's a challenge right there. Is it something, a cause? Is it a mission you're on? Is it a crusade you want?
Is it a new hobby? Is it something you want to learn about you don't know anything about? Is it once and for all you stepping up right now with whatever you're going through business-wise and it's difficult and every day you get up, you go, my gosh, I walk into a fire every day and now you're telling me to take on another challenge? Ed, my gosh, every day my business is melting down.
Every day there's more difficult. Then maybe your challenge is to say, I'm going to build the mental toughness and the resistance that when I walk in there every day, I say, God and I are partnering up. I got this. I'm built for this.
I'm getting through this because on the other side of this pain, this company is going to be better. I'm going to be a better leader. I'm going to get wealthier. I'm going to help more people.
Our company is going to expand. Our mission as a company is not going to die because of what we're going through right now. I am bigger. God is bigger than this obstacle I'm going through right now. And bring it.
Bring it. Maybe that's your challenge. Maybe earlier in the podcast, you're going, hey, man, you're not talking to me.
I'm talking to you. I know a lot of you are struggling in business. I know the market's not doing great.
I know the world's going crazy right now. And what I'm saying to you is perhaps your challenge. is a mental one where you got to fortify yourself mentally.
Listen to some of my other podcasts. Listen to the good stuff. Feed yourself the right thoughts. Get into your prayer. Move your body.
Physically become a machine, right? Physically train your body where you're like, I got all this, right? Me and God got all this.
Maybe that's your challenge right now. Let me tell you something. Over the next two or three years in this world, we're going to separate the people who get challenged, the people who are mentally tough, the people who understand the difference that I'm going to go through some pain, but this man, this woman, I will not suffer. I'm getting something from my pain.
I'm going to ask the right questions. I'm going to be faithful. I'm going to go back to the word.
I'm going to go back to what I believe in. I'm going to grow myself. I'm going to become a physical trained specimen that could take on anything. I'm going to mentally train myself, spiritually grow.
I'm going to do this thing. My let's said, I'm going to challenge myself because everybody else. When the world's caving in and things are difficult, what's their tendency? Shrink, shrink, shrink myself. And when you shrink yourself, you become defenseless.
And when you become defenseless, you feel powerless. And when you feel powerless, you suffer. But when you feel powerful, you will not suffer.
You will just go through pain. Pain is inevitable, and it's temporary. This too will pass.
So if you're struggling in your business right now, it's because when people get around you, they don't feel it. It's not what you're saying that's wrong. It's what you're not feeling. When people get around you, they got to feel something like, oh my gosh, this person is a deep believer, a true believer. I their energy shifts me.
I'm feeling something from them. And when you shift someone's energy, you don't have to have a talent for that. You know this.
You have to feel it. Think about the person that loves you most in the world. They don't have to have the right words. They have to have the right feeling. And when they have the right feeling, something shifts in your biochemistry, in your neurology, in your heart.
When you're around someone who truly loves you. You feel it. Or when you're around someone you truly love, you feel it. Have you ever been around someone who so deeply believes in their faith, you're almost just moved by their feeling, their commitment? What they feel shifts you.
Isn't that interesting? In business, the people that have been the most successful that I know in my life, some of them are not great communicators. They're just not.
Some of them are really not good at all at it. Some of them have been smart. and some of them not so smart.
I'm telling you. Some of them really have grown. Some of them need to grow a little bit more.
But I can tell you one thing they all have. When you're around them, man, you believe they believe it. Remember this, in business especially.
But this is true in life. I don't need to get you to believe everything I'm saying. I need to get you to believe I believe what I'm saying.
Let me say that to you again. Influence and persuasion in life. is not that you believe everything someone says. That's a high bar.
Influence and persuasion is you believe, I believe what I'm saying. Your job in life is not to get everybody to believe what you're saying all the time. It's to get them to believe you believe what you're saying. Now you're a leader.
Now you're moving people. And the only way people are gonna truly feel that you believe what you're saying is that you do, is that you deeply connect to it where it just pours out of you. energetically, your vibrational frequency.
And by the way, typically once that's rooted in you, the words do follow. They do follow. It's one of those days you feel like in flow. When you're deeply in flow, one of the benchmarks of someone who's in deeply in flow state is their deep commitment to what they're doing puts them in flow state. In my life, I would just say to you, that's when the Holy Spirit takes over and just says, I got this, right?
Only when you're deeply committed. only when you truly believe. Think about the people you've already helped in your life and how much it means to you. Think about the people you won't help and the lives you won't change if you don't get deeply committed to your challenge, to your mission, to your cause.
Think about the lives that you won't reach, the difference you won't make if you don't step up right now into your purpose, into your mission, into your challenge, into your cause. Think about how many other people will actually suffer. Because you don't step into your purpose and your mission and your cause in a way that absolutely, overwhelmingly persuades people that they need to change themselves and follow you. What's the difference you're going to make? Are you going to train yourself into becoming a machine?
Right? And if none of that applies to you, none of that applies. Maybe you're sitting there and you don't have a mission. You haven't been challenged in a while.
You're wondering why you don't feel so good, even though life's not so bad. You're suffering in comfort. And the reason you're suffering in this pretty comfortable life you got right now is you don't have a mission.
You don't have a challenge. That really means you go, maybe you got an old one. It's two or three or four or five years old. And maybe it's just not what it was to you anymore. And maybe you need a new one or an additional one to reignite the old one.
Or maybe the old one isn't it anymore. I don't know. But what I do know is that this is a time where great people challenge themselves and challenge the people around them.
And most importantly, they set the example for the people around them. More than anything, if you're a business person and you go challenge people and you aren't setting the personal example, that will fall on deaf ears and people will resent you. You're challenging me and you can't challenge yourself?
You're telling me to step up and get in here earlier and you still come later? You're challenging me to make more phone calls and you're making less? You're challenging me to get in shape and you're not? You're challenging me to be reading books and you're not.
You're challenging me to be more optimistic and work on my emotions and you're not. So if you're going to challenge people, you better set the example. And if there's nobody you're leading, I promise you there's somebody.
You have a child or a parent or somebody that's watching you. Set the example. Take pride in that example you're setting.
That will make the biggest difference. What you do will scream so much more loudly than anything you say. But I got to tell you something. Sometimes saying, hey guys.
Here's what I'm doing. I'm going on this personal challenge. I'm going to run an Ironman in six months, or I'm going to do a 5k, or I'm going to lose 20 pounds, or I'm going to read 30 books, or I'm going to make XYZ.
I'm going to make this many sales this month. I'm going to make this many phone calls. I'm going to do the X, Y, or Z in your life. What starts to happen, and you say, so watch me, and now I want to challenge you to do it with me. That's the way you invite people.
That's the way you ignite people. That's the way you invigorate people. That's the way you turn things around. So wherever you are in your life right now, I want to challenge you. to not suffer.
It's okay that you go through a little bit of pain and to understand what it is. And for you to leave the isolation of your mind and to get into the spirit. See, there are a lot of people in life who are looking for motivation and that plays to your motives, more money, more likes, more cars, more houses, more stuff, more awards.
All that's great. You should be motivated. The next level after that is to be inspired.
To be inspired is to be in spirit. That's the root of that word. And to be in spirit means that it's bigger than that. It's about you growing as a man or a woman. That's special.
And there's even a level past being inspirational, and that's being aspirational. Aspirational people are the people we look at and we aspire to be more like them. They set the example.
I challenge you to have all three. Be motivated, be inspired, and aspire to be the type of person that other people look to where you become an aspirational leader and they want to be just like you because of the example you set. You can't do all that.
Feel down you can't do all that and suffer you will do all that and go through pain And when you get to the other side of that pain There'll be a reward that's beyond your imagination as great as you think it is to become the man or woman you're capable of becoming It's a million times greater Listen to me as great as you think it'll be to become the man or woman you're capable becoming I can tell you it's a million times greater because when you get there You already have built the habits of wanting to expand again and that journey that ride to finding the ultimate you, the best you, is one of the greatest journeys that you'll ever live in your life. In fact, I think it's the greatest. I think it's the greatest until you get to heaven someday.
And then that surpasses all understanding and all bliss. All right, everybody. I hope today helped you.
If it did, share this with somebody that you love and care about that needs to stop suffering or needs a challenge, needs a mission, needs a cause, needs to be reminded of their own greatness. I love you all. God bless you.
Max out.