You Will Never Look At Life The Same Les Brown
the easiest thing i’ve done
was to get out from under the labels and
to live the life that i live the most
difficult thing i’ve ever done
was to believe that i can do it
the difference is that when you don’t
know
what’s impacting you and it’s it’s
something that
that’s holding you down and you’re not
aware of it
there are things that when you in my
situation
you live in a dominant culture that is
designed to destroy your sense of self
and your belief in yourself and and you
have to learn
ways in which you can begin to connect
with this power that you have within
yourself to handle where you are
the key is to be constantly in a
perpetual process
of discovering the truth of who you are
and
fighting constantly to look for ways in
which you can escape
the inner conversation
between ages zero and five
we determine what’s available to us and
what’s not available to us and so
that was a defining moment i knew
there are certain things i could not do
certain places i could not go
they used to have signs on miami beach
that said jews
dogs and cullets not allowed and so
now you have to operate within the
constraints of the dominant society and
the things that they’ve created for you
and it’s a challenge to see yourself
beyond that
and to work to get outside of that even
after
those laws have changed because that has
become
so much a part of you you unconsciously
operate within the parameters of what
has been put
in place like you go to you’re driving
on the expressway the four or five
and and you’ll get off on an exit that
you weren’t going in that direction but
you unconsciously did it because you’ve
done it so many times
that many people because they’re not
making a conscious deliberate determined
effort
to think outside of what life has thrown
at them
they end up doing the same thing over
and over and over again einstein said
that
thinking that has brought me this far
has created some problems
that this thinking can’t solve and so
through relationships through reading
through studies through goals and dreams
beyond your comfort zone it allows you
to begin to live
out of your imagination as opposed to
out of your history
disney said the imagination is a preview
of what’s to come
they have to expose themselves to
something
that will give them a different vision
of themselves
and in addition to that they have to put
themselves
in a community of what i call oqp
only quality people a gentleman who
dramatically transformed my life i was
a junior at booger t washington high
school in miami florida
and i went in his class looking for
another friend
and and he said go to the board and work
this problem out for me
i said sir i can’t do that he said why
not i said uh
i’m not one of your students he said do
it anyhow.
and and the other kid started laughing
saying he’s leslie
he’s dt and he said what’s dt he’s
his brother is smart but he’s the dumb
twin
and and i said i am sir and he came from
behind his desk and he
pointed at me said don’t you ever say
that again someone’s opinion of you does
not have to become your reality
and he taught me three things he said if
you want to become successful in life
young man
he said number one you got to change
your mindset
he said you don’t get in life what you
want you get in life what you are
number two practice oqp
only quality people you earn within two
to three thousand dollars of your
closest friends i found that out i left
all my broke friends i said y’all got to
go
cause i used to be so broke i passed the
bank and tripped the alarm
you know and the third thing he said
develop your communication skills
because once you open your mouth
you tell the world who you are he said
those are three
major things that you want to work on
that will liberate you from living in
liberty city
living in poverty and over town it will
help to
escape out of where you are right now
because i see you watching me and i know
you want more i can see the
hunger in your eyes
you get hungry by finding something
that’s you
i believe that all of us are born unique
but most of us dye copies
you’ve got to find out what is it that
turns you on what
resonates with you one of the things
that
i realized and what allowed me to become
successful as a speaker
the speaking industry has been hijacked
by people who
speak to sell and it’s okay to do that
and make money
i speak to change lives because somebody
spoke
and changed my life so this is my
passion
this is my drive this is something that
i feel in my heart
and and so the key to
that hunger driven life is a
heart-centered life
i didn’t do what i’m doing for years
because of my programming because
of the culture in which i was raised in
i would see other people with
with degrees and phds and and
mbas and credentials i don’t have and i
convinced myself i couldn’t do it
but mr washington on that day
we became friends and and he taught me
not only
someone’s opinion of you just does not
have to determine your reality
he said that you have to work on
yourself and you have to have an
unstoppable attitude and
no excuse is acceptable and you’ve got
to
to make it a a priority a non-negotiable
in your life
and hold a constant vision of what it is
you want to achieve
see it accomplished and go all out
find a way to win in spite of the
setbacks in spite of the disappointments
in spite of your
failures i tell people when i’m giving
presentations you will
fail your way to success i have a saying
is life knocks you down trying to land
on your back because if you can look up
you can get up and so
those experiences of of going after
goals that’s beyond your comfort zone
and
having relationships that will challenge
you and surrounding yourself with
coaches and
mentors who can take you to a place
within yourself
that you can’t go by yourself because
you can’t read the label when you’re
locked in the box
and so those experiences they
challenge you to go to that next level
and continue
to move forward in your life doing new
and exciting things that i has not seen
ear has not heard noah is in the heart
of mankind what god has in store for you
when you live a hard-centered life
deciding that you’re going to live a
life that will outlive you you’re going
to live a life
that counts a life that will build a
legacy and change the planet you know
horror’s man said we should be ashamed
to die
until we’ve made some major contribution
to humankind
and so my goal is to make a major
contribution to humankind
every day when i get up my mindset
is what is it that i can do to touch and
impact somebody’s life
today what is it what does that look
like
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don’t live the life that has been given
you
by the people that’s around you that
sydney port here wrote a book called the
measure of a man
and he said when you go for a walk with
someone
something happens without being spoken
he said
either you adjust to their pace
or they adjust to your pace whose pace
have you adjusted to
and so they’re things that we pick up
and we think that they’re our
choices but they’re the choices that
we’ve been programmed by
life to to do when we leave our homes in
the morning
we’re bombarded with over 6 000
advertising hits through facebook
through twitter through instagram
through television
through our phones and through our
communities uh and through
the computers and so all of these things
are
impacting us every day so if you don’t
have a program
for your mind then your mind is going to
be programmed and you’ll find yourself
doing things that you did not know
and and that they affected you that they
through marketing techniques and
strategies
that they will create a thirst within
you
i came up in an era that said if you
built the best mouse trap
the world will be the path to your door
but if you know
marketing people will sleep outside your
store
to buy a telephone they’ve never touched
or
seen but because of the marketing they
said i
got to have that and when they get it
it’s a smartphone with their
dummy because they don’t know how to
work it
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