…people and situations that upset you. See, there’s some people that know just how to push your button. They know just what to say.
But I’m not going to expend any energy arguing with anybody. Life is too short, ladies and gentlemen, and unpredictable.
I don’t want to spend my time arguing with anybody, so I avoid situations that will get me upset. I don’t argue with people.
Draw the line, ladies and gentlemen. There are certain things that we just go through life just taking and at some point you just got to draw the line and just say, enough is enough. You got to do that with yourself.
One negative stroke is 16 times more powerful than a positive struggle. And if you have people around you who are not sensitive to who you are, and the people that can hurt you the most, ladies and gentlemen, are the people that you love. That you love.
They’re the ones that you’re vulnerable to. They’re the ones that can get to you, and if they’re insensitive, I don’t care who they are.
See, if you don’t draw the line with people, if you just let them run rampant in your life, and you let things happen to you that you don’t feel good about, if you continue to allow it to happen, you won’t feel good about yourself.
Your image of yourself will erode. So you’ve got to draw the line.
A lot of people just go to a job where they’re miserable day-in and day-out. Why do people stay together and they’re miserable, sleeping in separate rooms, or arguing?
The only thing they have in common: paying the bills — don’t talk, don’t communicate, don’t share anything together.
Day-in and day-out is short and unpredictable that life is, being mean to each other. Why do people do that?
Known hells are preferable to strange heavens, because it’s familiar. See, life is rough, ladies and gentlemen. It’s rough and it’s scary.
It’s scary growing, it’s scary taking a chance. It’s scary acting on your intuition, on your guts. It’s scary; it’s frightening.
There are people that’s just tolerating things right now and they’re immobilized by fear. They can see the hammer coming, and they afraid to even move, because it’s scary to go against the dominant thinking of your family, friends, and those people you associate with every day is perhaps the most difficult act of courage you will ever perform.
See, when you start growing, when you start changing, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you act, the way you respond to things, the way you use your time, when you start saying no, I can’t do that?
“Why? You – you’re too busy? You don’t have the time?”
So if people can put you on a guilt trip, they will and use you and abuse you over and over and over again. You got to draw the line. You have to draw the line on them.
Don’t go through life feeling like you’re powerless, victims of people that are powerless. You’re not powerless. You are powerful!
You direct the power in your life. Whatever your life is right now, it is a duplication of your consciousness. It’s a result of how you have decided to use your power. That’s all it is. That’s not who you are. That’s just a perverted use of your power that you aren’t satisfied with. And you’ve got the power to change that.
Wherever you are, how? I don’t know but I know you’ve got the power to do that. But you don’t know what has happened to me. It really doesn’t matter what has happened to you.
See, the only thing that really matters is: what are you going to do about it? That’s all that matters. That’s all that matters!
You can allow it to destroy you, or you can allow it to build you up. We never get to a level where we feel that there’s nothing else for us to do. That we’ve achieved certain number of goals and we figure that we’re through?
No, no, you don’t want to stay there and celebrate too long like a lot of people do. They do something they consider outstanding. They go around talking about what they used to do. See, let me tell you I used to do this, and I used to do that.
Excuse me! used to be’s don’t make no honey. What are you doing now? You’re still here breathing. That means you’ve got some more to give. Doesn’t matter how old you are. Doesn’t matter about where you are. Doesn’t matter about what you have. Doesn’t matter about what you’ve done.
Life is about growing, is about being productive, is about stretching, is about challenging yourself. So you start looking around and decide: hey, hey what else do I want to do?
What got me here is a time for celebration but also a time for reflection. What got me here, what worked, what did not work, what do I need to do to repeat so that I can get the same kind of results in other areas of my life?
If the goal is to improve my health, if the goal is to improve my relationship, if the goal is to improve my income, if the goal is to improve something in society, what is it I need to do?
Now, don’t get confused with what you do with who you are. Don’t trip. Don’t go on some type of ego trip by talking about how bad you are. None of us do anything by ourselves. Develop an appreciation for external support as well as good fortune, because all of those things play a role.
The other thing is: don’t go overboard celebrate. You must meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. You look at, hey I did it. I feel good about that.
Now you’re moving on to the next thing. Things did not work out the way you wanted them to work out. You didn’t produce the results you wanted to produce: hey, missed that? You win some; you lose some. Next, moving right on.
Don’t confuse who you are with what you do and make your mind fertile ground for the seeds of opportunity. Think if you want to experience a sense of fulfillment, you’ve got to have an open mind so that ideas can come in there and take root and grow.
So part of beginning to have fertile ground, you know you got to break that ground up. You got to break up that hard crust, because if you don’t, seeds fall there and the wind can blow them away, the winds of doubt.
When you’re set in your mind and you refuse to grow and you’re not open to new ideas, new methods, new ways of doing things, if your mind is already fixed, you become stagnant. You can’t grow; you can’t have a sense of fulfillment.
You become extremely cynical and negative about everything. You know it all. So you want to begin to look at life and have a sense of curiosity, not know it all.
You want to keep learning, keep growing, realize that we had a theme: you never find out how much you know until you find out how little you know. And there are some people you can’t tell anything. They have all the answers. Oh, I’ve already done that.
So many of us count ourselves out of things prematurely. You don’t know what the possibilities are up in there. So you want to be open. You want to continue to learn. You want to continue to grow. You want to begin to know that there are unlimited ideas out here waiting for you to latch on to them.
And if you don’t take advantage of them, when they come your way because you’re so close-minded, do understand somebody else will. We’ve all had ideas. Then we did not act on and looked around and somebody else had the idea and gone with it.
So be open and receptive. Become involved in life. Live your fantasy. Most people go through life not living their fantasy, going sitting up in the bleachers, looking out on the field, looking out into the arena, wishing that they were down there, just fantasizing seeing themselves running with the ball.
Decide to live your fantasy. See, in life you can go through life, you can come up with reasons or you can come up with results. You can come up with excuses or you can come up with achievements.
You can go through life blaming or you can come up with solutions. The choice is in your hands. Satisfaction or despair — we can choose that.
So look at your life and decide: what it is that you want to do that will give your life a sense of worth? Someone said that your life worth is measured by your accomplishments and not by your complaints.
Want to have a fulfilling life? Decide not to make your life predictable. Some people, their lives are very predictable. They got a little routine. They do that, may follow that day in and day out, day in and day out.
You don’t get much juice and happiness out of life like that if you are predictable. You want to change it up. Variety most certainly is a spice of life.
Here’s something else. Want to create a greater sense of fulfillment? Challenge your fears. Challenge them. Look those fears in the face and take them on. Don’t allow them to rule you.
Decide that you’re going to take some chances. You’ve got to be willing to risk. If you’re not willing to risk, you can’t grow in life. Life has no power when you’re not willing to risk.
It’s that: to laugh is to risk appearing the fool, to weep is to risk appearing sentimental, to reach out for another is to risk involvement, to expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self, to place your ideas, your dreams before crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return, to live is to risk dying, to hope is to risk despair, to try is to risk failure.
But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, and live. Chained by their servitudes, they are a slave. They have forfeited their freedom.
