[0:01]You are responsible for your life. And if you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you,
[0:13]you are wasting your time because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward. Nobody is going to cry for you. They have their own tears. One thing I'm positive about is how ROI negative complaining is and how much I'm trying to suffocate the practice of it. I really have been fascinated by people that have changed their mindset into understanding that everything that is not going well right now is their fault. It has been remarkably important to me in understanding that everything that I'm not happy about has is on me. It's it's a remarkably interesting brain twist. The amount of energy spent on things that you can't control versus being accountable to what you can control has been a huge separator for me in the last four or five years as I've dug deep. I always tell people the most valuable lesson I got from my mentor Jim Rone, was I asked, my father worked two jobs. We were always broke. We had no money for food, and we lived in the community we moved to, I thought they were all rich and we're on the other side of the tracks. It was a lower middle class, but compared to where we lived before, these people seem rich compared to us and I just didn't understand it. And Jim said to me, Tony, it's not about the value of your soul. It's about the value of you in the marketplace, and your father's skills are not valuable. Someone said we have two primary choices in life. We can either accept conditions as they exist, or we can take the responsibility to change them. See, a lot of people want to exempt themselves from taking responsibility. All they want to do is talk about the problem. Every time you see them, they'll tell you their story over and over and over and over again. No one's going to do anything for you. Couple of rules of being a real leader, you need to take responsibility for your own life, bringing energy to your team, leading and recruiting, leading and leadership, leading and growth. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe other people everything. That's what a leader does. You take responsibility, you know exactly right now what you're not doing, it would be criminal if you to leave here and say, I don't know what to do. You know exactly what you're afraid of, you know exactly what you've been avoiding and you got to make a decision to change it. You know exactly what it is. Don't BS anybody, you know what you need to do different, you know the changes you need to make. And if you could do that, you stop kidding yourself. You can win, you can overcome your fear, overcome procrastination, whatever that is. I say to people, you've got to participate in your own rescue. You got to retool yourself. There are no skill sets in community colleges today for the most part that are going to prepare you for the economy or a job that's there. So what is that going to do? You're just going to waste more money, more time. We need to retool ourselves. The government's not going to do it for you. And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you, don't ever give up on yourself. Right now between me and the person I want to be, between you and the person you want to be, there is a gap of skill set and that's it. But once you know your mission, and once you believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, then you can do the extraordinary. Now for me, getting out of that space of being lost of not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, it all came down to needing to earn credibility with myself. In very small, incremental ways. And I knew if I was going to accomplish anything in my life, I was going to have to get control of my mind. Now, ironically, there's two ways to get control of your mind. Way number one is directly going to the mind, which can be very scary. It can be very daunting, very ethereal, it's a femoral, it's hard to grab onto, it's hard to touch, but way number two is through the body. And so I decided that my Kung Fu was going to be to get very good at developing my body. And in that process, I was going to learn about nutrition, which would allow me to help my mom and my sister in that process. I was going to credibility with myself and earning credibility with yourself is so important. Do it in micro ways. For me, just showing up to the gym every day was a micro victory. I said I was going to do it and I did it. Now you have to understand, I hate working out. So for all of you, crazy people that get an endorphin rush from running, I hate you all. Running for me is like being stuffed into a meat grinder. There is absolutely nothing pleasurable about it whatsoever. So whatever neurological thing you guys get that you have been blessed with. I have not been blessed with that. So for me, showing up in the gym sucks, eating a bowl of ice cream is awesome. And so getting to, getting to a better place for me, was a totally different journey. Thank you. And what that was, was just showing up every day and putting in the work. It was reading about human metabolism and understanding how what I eat impacts my body. It was earning a little bit of discipline every day, knowing that, well, I did it yesterday. I can do it again today. It was not eating something that I wanted to eat. And most importantly, and if you're taking notes, write this down. It was about changing my identity. Because at the end of the day, identity and values drive behavior. Identity and values drive behavior. So if you want to make a change, you have to change your vision of who you are. You have to begin telling yourself a different narrative and the narrative you tell yourself about yourself is everything. And if you tell yourself that you're a scared, undereducated kid from Tacoma whose family has never accomplished anything, let me tell you what you will become. A scared undereducated kid from Tacoma who never accomplishes anything because that's what you believe. You tell yourself that story enough and it will become real. But on the flip side, you could tell yourself a story of you're a learner. You learn faster than most people, you're willing to put in more work than most people. You're willing to read more books than most people. You're willing to spend an inhuman amount of time every day, improving your mind simply by getting new ideas into the system. And that you will admit that you're wrong faster than anybody else that you won't let your ego get in the way. And you tell yourself that story over and over and over. So when somebody comes and tells you how stupid you are, that you're just a dumb kid from Tacoma. You go, you're right. That's amazing. Thank you for pointing out that flaw because now that I'm aware of it, I can improve it because I'm the learner. And once I switched my narrative to being the learner, it didn't matter where I started. It only mattered where I was trying to go. And as long as I had that clarity, then I could execute because I believed I could do anything. I set my mind to without limitation. You don't need a better economy. You don't need better seed and soil. In fact, when it comes to seed and soil and rain and sunshine and seasons and the miracle of life, that's all you got. Now, what if you blame this stuff, then you're blaming all you got. If you blame the economy and you blame the schools and you blame the teachers, and you blame the sermons and the preachers, and you blame, uh, you know, the marketplace, and you blame the company and company policy, what else is there? When some people get through with their blame list, there is nothing else. That's all there is. And if you blame the only thing you've got to work with, I'm telling you, it's called mistake colossal. And not understanding that that's all you've got to work with. And if this is all you've got to do work with, then you don't change the seed and you don't change the soil, and you don't change the rain, and you don't change the sun sign. You don't change the seasons. God says I'll take three Springs, four summers, nine falls. No winters. No, no, you can't fool with this stuff. You got to take it like it comes. Then what do you change to make your life work well? You got to start with your philosophy. You got to start with your philosophy. Guess what I had to do at age 25 in order to change my own future, I had to change my mind. I had to change my thinking. I had to change my philosophy. I was messed up on what was causing my problem. And once I got that straightened out that all this stuff, I blame the government and taxes and the marketplace and the economy and things cost too much, negative relatives, cynical neighbors. Once I got rid of that and started going for where the real problem was, which was me, I'm telling you, my life exploded into change. My bank account changed immediately. My income changed immediately. My whole life took on a whole new look and color immediately. And the early results I got from making these philosophical changes tasted so good. I've never stopped the process from that day until this. And I'm telling you, with a little consideration of the refinement of your sale by setting a better sale, refining your philosophy. Your whole life can start to change from today on. You don't have to wait until tomorrow. You don't have to wait till next month. You don't have to wait until spring. Don't have to wait until 93, even start this whole process immediately. I recommend it. Now, some people do so little thinking, they don't even have their sale up. I mean, you can imagine where they're going to wind up at the end of this week. At the end of this month, at the end of this year, now's the chance to change process all this information. Here's the definition of success and failure. Just make this note. Here is failure a few errors in judgment. Repeated every day. Now you can automatically assume, Mr. John, I say I can understand that a few errors in judgment repeated every day for six years. My father, 88 years old. He's never been ill. Still hasn't retired. Not long ago, midnight. We're getting ready to go to bed. We've drilled a new well, that's an extra water. Got some more acres go on. He's all excited at midnight and ready to go to bed. My father is eating what he calls his midnight snack, a little bite to eat where you go to bed. Don't have to go to bed hungry and I'm watching him eat this midnight snack. Guess what he had an Apple, a few Graham crackers and a glass of grapefruit juice. I said, no wonder my father's so healthy. My mom taught us all those good health practices, taught me when I'm growing up. I'm an only child. I've never been ill. Past the big five sometime ago, my two daughters, 32, 33, never been healed. My grandkids never been ill telling you, the legacy lingers on. As I watched, my father had this midnight snack suddenly occurred to me. I know that's part of it and Apple, what?
[11:00]A day, that's gotten to Dallas Fort Worth, right? An apple. An apple a day, keeps the doctor away. Good question for this intelligent audience. What if that's true? You say, well, Mr. Rone, if that's true, that would be easy to do, then what's the problem? It's easy not to do. It's easy not to adopt it as your own personal philosophy, or the guy messed up to say, Guy says a Hershey bar a day. say, no. No. You've been watching too much television. It is not Hershey bar. You got to be smarter in philosophy, then to fall for the Hershey bar a day, when it's an Apple a day, you got to be smarter than that. And if you make that kind of an error in judgment, Every day for six years, I'm telling you, it'll accumulate into disaster. Sometimes the first year, you say, well, you know, I'm so healthy now, what difference is it going to make? You got to be smarter than that, just because disaster doesn't fall on us at the end of the first day, doesn't mean disaster isn't coming. You got to be so smart that you look down the road and say, will the errors in my present judgment? A philosophy. What's that going to cost me in one year, six years, one month, six months, I'm telling you, the money cost and the health cost and the success cost is too gigantic. If you'll look down the road a little ways and say, are there errors in my current judgment like an Apple versus the Hershey bar? Is that just a good illustration of some of the rest of my errors in judgment? If it is, That's where I found myself at age 25. I started working when I was 19. I met my teacher who helped turn my life around when I was 25. That's six years. At the end of the first six years of my economic life, I've got pennies in my pocket. I've got nothing in the bank. The creditors are calling saying, Hey, you told us the check was in the mail. I'm embarrassed. I'm behind on my promises. I live in America. I'm 25 year old American male. I got a nice family, every reason to do well, and I messed up. Now what's messed up? I used to think of it as the community was messed up, and the country was messed up, and the government was messed up. If those ones Democrats ever get in the White House, that'll really mess things up. If the Republicans stay in power, that'll really messed up, the economy was messed up. Interest rates are messed up. I thought all this stuff was messed up. Then I found out that's not what was messed up. I was criticizing. The only thing I had to work with, what was really messed up was my own personal philosophy. My own errors in judgment in my own personal philosophy, brought me in six years, two pennies in my pocket, nothing in the bank and trying to explain why I wasn't doing well. Living in America, 25 year old American male, got a family, every reason to do with Now, once I understood this, here's the formula for failure, errors, judgment, being lax about developing your own personal philosophy. I'm telling you, it's called accumulated disaster.
