How Successful People Fulfill Their Full Potential

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33this is the admired show welcome back to the show everybody i am so excited about today's topic i've wanted to record this episode for about a week now i'm finally getting a chance in the studio to do it with you we're going to talk about today is actually what do you need to do to fulfill your dreams and your potential and i want to start out by saying something to you you're going to have to decide in your life that you're going to be different that you're not going to be like everybody else, that you're not going to be a part of the crowd. Everything in our culture today is trying to make us all the same, put us all in the same box, take what I call the crowded road of life as opposed to the lonely road of life, the road less traveled.

1:10And I've done a show on that before and people ask me if I would go deeper on it. So I will today. And so today we're going to talk a lot about the mindset that's required to do something great. And the first decision is to accept the fact that you're going to be different. You're going to be criticized. You're going to have haters. But not only that, you're going to feel very alone oftentimes on the journey. And you're not going to feel like a lot of people understand you. And it's making a decision up front that I'm okay with not being like everyone else. I'm okay with not being part of the pack, that I want to be different.

1:44I want to stand out. You know, it's a difficult decision to do that, especially when maybe you don't have the confidence yet to do it. But at the end of your life, you're going to regret the fact that you didn't go for it, that you didn't try to do something different and unique and follow your heart, follow your own path. If you're a person of faith, we know that each of us was made individually in God's image and likeness, whatever your faith might be, and that there's an individual plan for our life. And so if there's an individual plan, an individual destiny for our lives, why would we try to take pages out of everybody else's book?

2:19Let me say something to you up front, okay? Conformity to me is the ultimate form of cowardice. Let me say it again conformity is the ultimate form of cowardice Meaning when you just decide to conform to what everybody else expects of you What everybody else is doing or what they think you are what they think you should be doing or they're limiting beliefs about you They're small minds. See small-minded people god bless them will constantly try to project their smallness onto you to get you to shrink and then what happens is most people end up being a coward in life it's what it really is where they just begin to conform I'm going to do and say what you think I should do and say I'm not going to speak my mind I'm not going to stand up for what I believe in I'm not going to try something outside of the box because I might fail and then you'll criticize me and even when I'm trying you'll probably criticize me and even if I win and succeed you're probably going to criticize me You ought to just decide right now and understand something, okay?

3:23Let me say this to you. You're going to get criticized the whole time. You're going to get criticized when you try. You're going to get criticized if you fail. And believe it or not, you're going to get criticized when you win. Because what people that are losing in their life do is they criticize people. And the reason they're critical of other people is it's the only time in their life that they feel like they have any power or any value that they're even noticed. so because they're in the pack and they've conformed and they're on the crowded road they don't ever stand out they don't ever get noticed and so if you're not ever going to do that and you're being a coward which is to be like everybody else well what's the one way out of that cowardice is to be a bully is to be a critic is to sit on the sidelines and poke fun or tell people how they ought to do it better when they're not doing anything and you've just got to decide in your life i know i'm being a little bit more intense than normal today you got to decide in your life that you don't want to take advice from these people.

4:14You don't want to think like these people. And by the way, many of them are really great people. Just at one time, they just decided, you know what? I'm just going to color between the lines in my life. I'm just going to color right in between the lines like everybody else, which I'm going to talk about in a minute.

4:33And so what ends up happening, Gandhi has this great quote that I've been really working on lately. Gandhi said, I will not let you walk through my mind with your dirty feet. And too many of you are letting the people around you walk through your mind with their dirty feet. And it's polluting your brain. It's polluting your thoughts. It's creating negative belief systems, limiting belief systems. And you know what? Your own confidence, your own strength, your own self-esteem is going to come from you. You have to understand something. When you try something in your life, okay, or you attempt anything in your life, you're either going to become wise or you're going to become wounded.

5:14And too many people, once they start to try, become wounded. The failure wounds them. The setback wounds them. The criticism wounds them. Their own, by the way, sometimes the people walking through your mind with their dirty feet are you and your own thoughts. And by the way, the reason I know this is I very much have done this myself. The guy walking through my mind most of the time with his dirty feet is this dude right here. And I've learned something. I don't have to believe everything I think. In fact, I don't anymore. Most of the stuff I think, all the studies say, I've said this in other podcasts, 80 to 90 % of our thoughts are negative.

5:48These aren't my thoughts. Those aren't God's thoughts. Those are somehow very, very wounded man's thinking, not a wise man. And I'll ask myself that when I have these thoughts. Is this a wise man's thoughts or a wounded man's thoughts? You ask yourself that. These negative thoughts that you're having, these limiting thoughts that you're having, is that the wise woman's thoughts or the wounded woman's thoughts? And if it's the wounded woman, stop listening to her and start talking to her. Sometimes in life, you got to stop listening to yourself so much and start talking to yourself. And it's all your responsibility.

6:20Listen, it's not called friend esteem or stranger esteem or mom and dad esteem. It's called self-esteem for a reason, because you have to be the one to believe it. And listen to me, the fact that you're listening to my podcast or watching it means this, you're starting to grow, and maybe you've been growing for quite a while. And by the way, if you're outgrowing people, it makes them very uncomfortable with themselves. And then because they're uncomfortable with themselves, they become dream stealers. Because here's what happens. You getting bigger makes them feel smaller. And so the consequence, what a lot of us do is we decide to shrink ourselves and get smaller so that they can feel bigger or safer with us around.

7:02Let me say that to you again. You getting bigger makes them feel smaller. And because you're a good person, whether it's your boyfriend or girlfriend, your spouse, your friends, your parents, whoever it is, what you do because you're a good person is instead of still getting bigger, you decide you will get smaller so they can feel bigger or safer with you. And what ends up happening is you You shrink your dreams and we shrink our lives. We shrink our energy. We shrink our capacity to fit in. And we make all these other people around us comfortable. And what I want you to do is I want you to make some people uncomfortable in your life.

7:39There's nothing wrong with making people feel uncomfortable. And if you're going to do it, see, to me, that's courage. Courage is being willing to make other people uncomfortable. Remember this. Sometimes I had to say this to my family pardon my progress But i'm going to be making progress over here, right? And eventually they might get on board and they might not get on board But I want to know that at the end of my life when it's over That i've given it everything i've got That I didn't shrink myself because I was a coward. I didn't shrink myself to please small-minded people around me That my capacity to grow my capacity to read my my total commitment to a personal development program, my total commitment to a self-improvement program.

8:23I started out as a very young man in my early 20s with absolutely no self-esteem, no confidence, no communication ability whatsoever. And I started the journey of self-discovery, self-improvement, and personal development. I started out as a terrible reader, but I found myself, at least I could read a book a month. And then it got to a book a week. and I got up to where I was reading sometimes 50, 60, 70, 80 books a year. And these were like mentors to me. When I read books, it's like this author is personally speaking to me and mentoring me, pouring into me. I mean, if there was a podcast like mine back then, my gosh, I'd be glued.

8:59I mean, I would be glued to it. I don't mean to brag, but like I would be glued to it. There's this great Chinese proverb that says, if you want to know the road ahead, ask those coming back. And to be able to listen to my Thursday episodes or the people I interview on Tuesdays, these are people who have the directions because they're coming back. I think I have some of them. But I know this, when I started out, because I didn't have a lot of confidence, man, every once in a while, the cowardly me would come back in. I would shrink my life, shrink my dreams, shrink my belief, right? Those voices were, those dirty feet were running through my mind.

9:32And then a few other people had their dirty feet doing it to me as well. And between the rest of us, between them and me, it was like a stampede in my mind all the time. and I didn't want to make people uncomfortable. I still, to this day, at 53 years old, I'm a people pleaser. I don't like to offend. I don't like to hurt people. If I have strife with somebody in my life, I can't sleep until I fixed it. I'm just wired that way. Many of you are. But I've learned that if I've made a mistake in how I've treated somebody or spoken to them, then it should bother me and I should fix it. But if the mistake I've made is trying to do something great with my life, the mistake I've made is trying to change my family tree forever.

10:10The mistake I've made is trying to be happier and grow. If the mistake I've made is trying to give to other people and contribute and create great memories in my life, then guess what? That's not a mistake. And I'm not apologizing for that. I've got one life. You've got one life. And it's time we have the courage to get after it and take the lonely road and not have this cowardice, this cowardly way about us where we just conform to what everybody else is doing.

10:38and I can tell you I think I know where it comes from I think it comes believe it or not all the way back when we were little little kids in our coloring books remember how much we were trained over and over again to color between the lines and I was always a terrible color I'm left-handed I just I've got no coordination skills this way you go look at my old coloring book they're just terrible but we're trained as children color between the lines Sarah color between the lines Bob, color between the lines, stay between the lines. And we're over and over and over. This is reinforced to us to stay between the lines.

11:12And there's a lot of great things about school, but coloring between the lines, sitting in the same way, fold your hand, all these things. What ends up happening is we begin to get older. We literally start to only color between the lines in our life. We don't want to get outside the lines. And I'm going to say something to you. all great people color outside the lines. All the people you admire, what do you admire about them? They colored outside the lines in their life. They didn't stay a conformist. They didn't stay with some predetermined picture. See, here's what a coloring book is. Here's the picture.

11:47Now you just fill in the one I gave you. Color between the lines. And that's what most people do in their life. The world hands them, here's your picture. This is what you get. This is your life. This is the one you're handed. Stay between the lines. Don't you bear outside those lines. Don't you get outside of there. And what happens is that we have this thing that's now wired into us once we're adults. Oh my gosh, I'm outside the lines. I better get back. I'm outside the lines. I better get back. And it becomes something in life where I've never been out here before. I need to come back. I'm misbehaving.

12:18I'm going to get in trouble. I'm not doing what I was trained to do. This isn't what I do. And I can tell you that's why there's so few people in life that win, but I can tell you the decision they've made. They've made the decision that they're not coloring within the lines anymore. And so my challenge to you today is to have courage, not cowardice, is not to conform, but to create, is to decide in your life that you're not playing within these lines somebody else handed to you, that you're going to design your own life with God, your own story, your own pictures, and that you're going to pick up a new pen, a new crayon, You're going to start coloring a whole new picture of your life.

12:54And when you begin to do that, it's going to be uncomfortable at first. And by the way, some of you have said, Ed, I've done it. And you know what? Now that I'm listening to you, I'm back between the dang lines again. I was outside. I had some failures and setbacks. And I ran back within the picture they gave me. You've got to stop this tendency of running back within the picture that everybody gave you. Shrinking your dreams down. Shrinking your life down to fit between these lines. Some artificial lines that everybody, some strange, a random person, I guess, gave you. but I can tell you this.

13:24I don't believe you were created to stay within those lines. I don't think you yet have any idea what your potential is and your capacity, but what I can tell you is you begin to expand your capacity and you start really getting out there. You'll be surprised how far you can go. The people that I know that are successful, myself included, if you think I am, for me to look back now how far I've come, my gosh, it's amazing. You'd have told me all these different things would happen, it blows my mind. But the reason that that happened is I finally started building a habit of I'm not shrinking to make you comfortable.

13:57And by the way, I'm not going to shrink to make me comfortable. I've got incredibly comfortable at being uncomfortable. In fact, this is probably not great to admit, but when I go too long, just kind of laying around being comfortable, I start to get uncomfortable. I start to get uncomfortable, not doing difficult things. People ask me all the time, why do you do cold plunges in the morning? Is it the anti-inflammatory properties? Is it, I don't know. No, not really. In fact, there's some data that says the longer you do it, the less that has an impact. I don't even know if that's right, but that's why I do it anyway.

14:31The reason that I do it is it's hard. The reason I do it is it's difficult. Successful people, happy people do difficult things. Unhappy people, and I believe of unsuccessful people have a tendency to not do difficult things. There's this great story. My firm at one time, we sponsored Carl Edwards. He was a NASCAR driver, very successful one for a long time. And I asked him about driving a NASCAR, and I'll never forget what he told me. I said, what's the hardest part? And he goes, well, there's obviously the physical toll that it takes on you, Ed, and obviously the mechanics of knowing how to drive the car correctly and all those things that I don't understand of being a top athlete in any sport.

15:15But he said the most difficult part is when you're driving and there's a crash in front of you and you're doing 150 miles an hour and all you can see is a smoke cloud. All you can see is a smoke cloud. And he said, and what you got to do is drive right through that cloud. You got to drive right through it. And he goes, and it's scary because you don't know what's on the other side. You could be going headlong into a car that's already crashed at 150, 180 miles an hour. bam and you don't know and you got to drive through the smoke anyway i never thought about that before he goes oh yeah i mean there's a wreck in front of you and there's ever the smokes everywhere he goes you just got to drive right through it and he said the other thing is when there's an accident he goes you know you're up against the wall and you're driving he goes your tendency when you're driving you got you're doing 150 or 180 or whatever they do the wall's a millimeter away he goes you can't look at the wall because when you look at it you drive right into it.

16:06You end up gravitating right into it. He said, you got to keep looking ahead, Ed. You can't flinch when there's an accident in front of you. You can't flinch where there's smoke and you can't see what's on the other side. You got to drive right through it. And I remember it firing me up thinking, man, that's life, man, that's success. Sometimes you can't see where you're going. You got to drive right through it, not knowing what's on the other side and have the faith and the confidence. And when you get to the other side, you will figure it out, that there'll be a blessing and a gift that you'll be protected.

16:32And that's what I mean by the conformity is cowardice, right? It takes courage to go through that smoke cloud. And then you've got to keep your eye on the prize. When you're driving 150, 180 miles an hour, an inch away from the wall, don't look at the wall. Don't look at the wall. Look ahead where you're going. And so many of us in life, even once we get it going, we start looking at the wall. I know I'm going to crash. I know I'm going to crash. It's so close. And we start looking at the things we don't want and we manifest them. We literally, I believe thoughts are magnets. And what you think about most regularly, you attract to yourself.

17:05I believe that. I believe it, especially if you do it repetitively, especially if I can be candid with you. And I may sound outside the lines for you, but let me just say this. I love being outside the lines. The more you begin to become successful and vibrate at a high frequency, the more you really need to protect your thoughts. Because when you're vibrating the highest frequency, you tend to draw things to you even more rapidly and more regularly when you're at that frequency. Okay. And so it's important that you not look at the wall in your life. That wall is an artificial line in the coloring book of your life.

17:39And when you begin to look at it, you decide to conform or hit it. But when you look ahead at where you're going, when you're focused in the present moment, see, I could tell you this. The other reason I love to cold plunge is it's so dadgum cold. It forces me to be fully present in that moment. You get into a cold plunge, you can't be worrying about your problems in that moment. You are fully focused on getting through those three to five minutes or however long you sit in there. For some of us that are crazy people, it's some of the few minutes every day we are fully present, right? And I can promise you, if you're doing 150 or 180 into a smoke cloud, you're not worried about your grocery list at that time.

18:13You're going right in there, fully present in the moment. And it's the most alive you ever feel in your life. See, total focus, you'll feel the most alive in your life. If you look back at your life, some of the most chaotic, busy, difficult times where you're happiest. And you may not have realized it at the time, but when you're in college cramming for finals, and I ask you to go back to those days, all the stress, you had a job and you're going through college, let's say if you had that. Some of the happiest times in your life. Some of you mamas, those days where you're eight months, your pregnancy, and you're, it was one of the difficult times in your life, yet one of the most blessed times in our life.

18:49See, when it's really busy and we feel the most out of control, we're driving through that smoke cloud. We're coloring outside those lines when we're the happiest. And when it's easy and cruise control and we're just kind of shrinking our life down to conform like everybody else, it's when we're the most miserable. That's why there's this thing that's inside of you right now saying, I'm supposed to be somebody. I'm supposed to do something great with my life. I'm not exactly settled where I am right now. You're not settled right now. You don't feel settled in your spirit. You don't feel settled in your spirit because you know there's more abundant faith for you.

19:22You know there's more people to help. You know there's a dream and a life waiting for you out there, even if you're in a great one right now. You've got this sense about you that there's another place for you to go. There's more people for you to help. There's more people for you to serve. If you're a believer that you want to serve God's kingdom in the biggest possible way you can, whatever that thing is for you. And I can tell you I know where that lies, and that lies outside the lines. And so today I hope you decide that you or no one else is ever going to walk through your mind with their dirty feet and that you've decided that you're not going to conform and that you're going to do something awesome with your life.

19:56I'm giving you full permission. In fact, I'm begging you, color outside the lines because that's where all the people that you want to help are waiting for you. All right, everybody, God bless you. Max out your life.

20:19Thank you.