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This is Kevin Harlan. Black Friday game days coming to prime and it's gonna be huge. Black Friday football is back with Bears Eagles at 3pm Eastern, followed by an Emirates NBA cup doubleheader, bucks Knicks at 7pm and then Mavs Lakers at 10pm and the whole day starts with a Capital One skins game as four elite PGA golfers hit the links with $4 million on the line. Don't miss a moment of Black Friday game day. The Capital One skins game at 9am Bears Eagles at 3, Bucks Knicks at 7, Mavs Lakers at 10. And it's all only on Prime. Welcome back to the show. So you're going to see a change in the show between now and the end of the year. You know, it's been no secret that I've had a few health issues the last couple years. Heck, I haven't even posted on social media in a few years. But we've been coming strong with three podcasts a week even during that time. Well, between now and the end of the year, I'm going to scale it down a little bit, but give more value. So what I'm going to do is I've created a masterclass is going to come out on Tuesdays and you'll still get your Saturday episodes. We're going to take a pause on Thursdays, but every Tuesday you're going to get a masterclass for me that I've created to help you finish 2025 strong and go into 2026 and make it the best year of your life. I'm calling this masterclass Max out your mind, Faith, focus and fire. Mastering your internal world so you can navigate your external world. It's going to come out every single Tuesday. I think you're going to love it. God bless you. Enjoy the episode. Hey guys, here's this week's lesson. Gratitude in the fire. Finding peace and purpose in every season of your life. The quality of your life will increase dramatically if you begin to believe and act like an observer in your life. Observe really means to notice or perceive. One of the reasons we lack such gratitude or even happiness in our life is it's all happening so fast and so we've lost sensory acuity in our life. What means is that there's just information and stuff happening all the time. We're busy. Our phone, our laptop, Netflix, the meetings we have, the calls we have, our family, the obligations, the travel, whatever it might be, work. We don't have time to observe and so everything just happens quickly and we don't get any of the juice out of our life. And as a result, that's very difficult to be grateful. One of the ways that I define myself now is I'm an observer. But if you're not careful, all the speed of that, all the busyness of that, you don't see anything, you don't feel anything, you don't experience anything in any depth. The depth of experience is the quality of our life. And so I started to call myself to myself. I'm an observer of my own life. I'm an observer of humanity. I'm an observer of other people's lives. And so the more I started to condition myself to be more observational, to notice more, to perceive more, maybe I even slowed down just a little bit. The depth of the gratitude in my life, the depth of my ability to make decisions, my discernment, my intuition, frankly my intellect, I have tapped into a superpower by becoming more observational. It's also caused me to be more grateful, more present, more peaceful. And yet at the same time, when I need to be even more intense and competitive than I've ever been before, that's because I'm in my life. Most people are just in their life and they never are aware of it, they never observe it. Observation causes awareness. The happiest people, and by the way, the people that I love to be around the most in my life are the most self aware. I want to talk to you a little bit about this for a minute. Number one, start to show more respect for people. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is put your phone down when someone walks in a room, put your phone down when you go to dinner or lunch with them, don't put it on the table, put it in your bag, put it in your purse, put it in your lap, leave it in the car. This forces you to become more observational and present with people. And when you do that, it changes your life. So I become observational of these various things. I'm gonna teach you how to do it. God's stuff. I observe God's stuff more into a level of depth that I never did. And this is going to sound hokey, but I'm going to give you some insights in it. I spend more time when I go outside and I hold my gaze at God's beauty longer. Something you don't walk outside and see a beautiful field or a stream or even a building that one of God's creatures as an architect created. But you hold it quickly. I've started to observe. This may sound really weird, but I Did this this morning. I walked out behind my house. There's an ocean out there which I can observe God's beauty there. But I did something much more simple. Just walked out there and I sat there for a few minutes and I just stared at one leaf on one tree. And I kind of forced myself to observe it longer than I might. Just one leaf. I narrowed my focus down to one leaf and I held that gaze for a good minute. Very different than normal. Just, oh, there's a tree. And then I moved to another one. Another tree with a different leaf on it. I spent some time observing it. I was much more present with myself, much more present. I then walked back in the house and my family was having breakfast. Instantaneously, I was more present. And when I walked in, I paused for a second and I held the gaze and I watched my family and the beauty of them. My precious son's home from college. So is my daughter. They were both actually in the kitchen at the same time and said, well, hey, what's going on guys? I stopped. I just held a gaze. It's my only son, it's my only little girl. And I watched him for a little bit and I appreciated them for a little bit. I let myself feel love for them. There's all these things around us all the time that if we just held the gaze a little longer and stopped looking around, not just put our phone down, that's basic, but just became fully present. With a leaf, with a building, with a water feature, with a piece of. You ever. I do this lately where I stare at my hand and I just notice things about me that I've never noticed before. I'm going to tell you right now. Your decision making, your thought processes, your ability to control your emotions are exponentially connected to your ability to observe and be present. And this is a skill, it is a talent, and it is not easy. I want to also tell you what I observed that's changed my life. I take time every day now to observe my breathing. You take for granted your breathing every single day. But if it stopped right now, you end. It's probably something to pay attention to. So if I can get quiet and just pay attention to my breathing and hear myself and feel myself breathe, I'm much more self connected, I'm much more grateful, I'm much more centered. I'm much smarter instantly, instantly I'm stronger and smarter and more present. If you can't be present with yourself, you have no way in the world of being present with other people. You're like hey, man, I'm busy. Number one thing in business, ability to build rapport and connect with people. If you can't connect and build rapport and connect with yourself, you can't do it with other people. People say to me all the time, your interviews are just different. In fact, dad, I see some guests on one show, I see them on yours, it's a completely different conversation. Why is that? I think it's my ability to be present with them and connect with them because I'm connected with myself. So I ask a smarter question. In the moment, I can feel something, an energy from them that others don't feel and they feel from me. My breathing is a huge one. Just for today. Give yourself a gift just for a second right now. Feel yourself breathe. Remember that guy? Remember her? She's been there all the time. Pay a little more attention to her. Pay a little bit more attention to him. It'll help you pay attention to everybody else. She's with you all the time. He's always been there. There's only been two constants in your entire life. God and you. How much attention do you pay to each of you? You got to give yourself that gift. It's why you're not happy. It's why you're not more productive. It's why you're not more influential. It's why you're not richer. It's why you don't have the emotions you want. It's why you don't have the body you want. It's why you don't have the things you want. Whatever the things are that you're lacking. It comes down to self awareness, presence and connection with oneself and one's maker. I pay attention to humanity. One thing I do a little bit more of than I've ever done in my life is when I walk into places, I observe people. I'm present with them. I look at their face. I wonder what their story is. I wonder what their history is. I love to people watch when I'm not noticed and I'm alone in an airport or somewhere. I know this may sound hokey, but I do it a lot and I pray for them. People walk by me on the street. If they don't recognize me, I'll peace be with you. I just have that thought. This connects me to people. This gives me gratitude and depth. I don't want to be a one dimensional human being. I want to have multiple dimensions and experience multiple emotions. And the way I do that is I observe. Something I do kind of semi regularly is I Just look at me in the mirror and notice things about me that are aging or that have changed or. But I like being present with me. It makes me more comfortable with me. Pay attention to your breathing. Pay attention to people. Pay attention to humanity. Pay attention to God's stuff. If you hold a hug for six seconds, your brain now floods, starts to release, by the way, serotonin and oxytocin into both of you. It also increases your immune system and reduces depression. If you can hold the hug for 10 seconds, you get what they call a serotonin oxy flood. A flood. So you're not only giving yourself that gift if you can do it, but you're giving yourself the gift to other people. What I'm basically saying here on Everything is if you could hold the gaze a little longer, if you could pay attention to your breathing a little more, if you could just take a flower or a book or your hand or something and just get present with it and notice the different things. Become an observer and noticer of things. If when you hug somebody, all the data tells us hug it for six seconds, you both get the gift. So I could give you the normal list that everybody else talks about that I've talked about, or I could start on Thursdays to give you stuff you don't hear anywhere in the world. And it's this. And that's why right now I can shift gears and get super intense because I'm fully present. I'm fully self aware in the moment. Doesn't mean I always am, but it's helped me control my emotions, it's helped me control my thinking, my intellect, my relationships, all of it. And overall, be a more blissful, peaceful human being? So many of you pray every single day, but you're just checking the box. Can you be present in that moment and have an appreciation and gratitude for this beautiful time you're connecting with your maker? In my case, my savior. Can you just get a little bit more of the juice? I'm telling you, you won't be successful if you don't. These are the things that have taken an average, ordinary man like me and built a pretty good life. I want to experience our emotions, right? I want to have all of them. I want to be present for them. I want to observe them, I want to be aware of them. I don't want to just go through my life busy grabbing, accumulating stuff and thinking, someday when I'm old, I'll get around to it. You can't love yourself if you don't know yourself. And you can't know yourself if you don't spend any time with yourself. And so you got to spend some time, man, it's such a great gift just to walk outside and go, what can I observe? I've done a million zooms from where I am. Can I tell you something? I started this and I went, what is that belt buckle? If you're on audio, it doesn't matter. What is that belt buckle? Oh, my gosh. That's when I won that golf tournament with Milt Walker. It took me all the way back to that moment of total bliss. And it's only because I noticed it finally. And it was one small observation of the belt buckle over my head on zoom that I didn't just take note of. I got up and looked at it, and it took me into that moment, and it completely shifted me. Something that simple. So observation changes everything in your life. And let's go back to that golf shot I hit. You know what required me to hit that golf shot at that time? And I'm not a great golfer. This is a golf tournament. But you know why I had the capacity to hit that golf shot, my best golf shot, under that most pressure. That's why this stuff matters. So hold the hug a little longer. Give people the respect of showing up. Notice and perceive a little bit more. Pay attention to your breathing. Notice God's stuff. Notice architecture. Notice people. Notice humanity. Hold the gaze. Take in more detail. Get more of the juice and all of the juice you want in your life of the other things are much more likely to happen as a result. So because the truth of the matter is, the quality of our life is really the quality of how we feel. Your life is really predicated on the quality of the questions you ask yourself. When you can take control of the internal questions you're asking yourself, it can change everything in your life. Because questions direct our attention, and attention is almost everything we really get. What we pay attention to, don't we? What you pay attention to, you get. And the brain is really lazy. The brain is constantly trying to conserve energy. So it loves to run patterns. It loves habits. So when you begin to build the thought loop, the habit of asking yourself a question of, what am I worried about? What am I lacking? Your brain constantly goes to find those things. And because you can only process so much information at once, if I paid attention to everything in my life, I would go crazy. So your brain tries to conserve energy and keep you sane, and it filters out a bunch of different things. But sometimes when we repeat A thought, it can become what I talk about often on here, like a delusion becomes delusional thinking, and we miss what's always been there. I talk a lot about the reticular activating system in the brain, the RAs, which is basically the filter of your life. It reveals to you that which you truly believe or which is really, really important to you. And it sort of scans out everything else. It's sort of like a matrix. I write about it in my book, the Power of One More. And so these questions you ask yourself can direct your RAs so that you're paying attention to the things that serve you. And so we're going to go through that today. And remember this. Thoughts are really like magnets. They truly are. When you begin to think about something repetitively, you draw to you through what you're aware of, the people, places and things that actually make those thoughts real oftentimes. So you have to be careful what you think about because you'll probably attract it. And I think a lot of you know what I'm talking about, especially those of you that have become more and more successful. You've really developed the ability, the vibrational frequency, to get yourself in such a state that when you think about something regularly, all of a sudden, someone you haven't thought about in years, you're thinking about them all the time. They call you out of the blue, or you've just had a thought recently about a particular car, all of a sudden you see that car everywhere. That's also how your brain works. Be careful what you're thinking about because your brain's going to show it to you. And so today we can change the way we feel if we can change and ask these questions. So here's the seven questions. The first question ask yourself when something's happening is, what does this mean? Step back and assess your meaning of the event. Because oftentimes in life, and by the way, sometimes fear is not a bad thing. Fear can cause you to focus. That's hardwired into you through hundreds and thousands of millions of years, potentially to protect you. So sometimes fear is like, pay attention to this. This is something you need to work on. So it's not always detrimental. Also, remember this, when it comes to meaning, it's not what happens to us in life, it's how we react. It's how we respond in life. Remember that. Again, it's not what happens, it's how we react and how we respond. Well, normally our response is based on what we think something means. So the first question is to ask yourself, when you're worrying about something or fearful about something or some event that's coming up that's causing you stress, what does it mean? Because if you can change the meaning, you're going to change the emotion. When you change the emotion, you've changed your entire life. And oftentimes maybe you've attached a meaning, something that doesn't serve you. There's this great story that I've heard many, many times about Mother Teresa, and I've told it on the show before. But Mother Teresa would say, like, let's take me, or you. Usually most people that she would say when she was present for someone's death, it was the greatest honor of her life. That's the meaning she would take from it. But I think most people, myself, probably you included, if I was present, if I went to a. There was a car accident on the road, I had to pull over, and I got out of my car and I found someone that had passed away from that car accident, and I had to take them from the car, my meaning in that event would be tragedy. Would I probably replay that video? And it caused me great pain in my life. I'd replay it over and over and over again. You know, these mental images we replay. Because the meaning for me is I was witness to tragedy. Someone lost a mother, a daughter, a sister. And that would be the meaning, justifiably, by the way, that I would take from that event. Mother Teresa would say that if she was at that exact same moment, that it was the honor of her life because her belief was, oh, my gosh, I was present to watch this person's soul leave their body and go to heaven. Do you see how then she'd leave that event of someone's passing feeling blessed, feeling honored, feeling privileged that she got to watch someone's soul go to heaven, happy for that person that they get to spend eternity in heaven. Whereas most people would be at that same event, attached to a different meaning, create a totally different event. And oftentimes the reason that we've attached so much stress or worry or fear or anxiety to something is we've attached a crazy meaning to it. And oftentimes the meaning we take is really, what are they going to think about me if this happens? What are people going to say? How are they going to feel about me? How are they going to look at me? But when you decide to take control of the meaning of something and step back away from it, get above it, think about it, and attach the meaning, many times in my life, I'LL ask myself, what would I need to believe this means? You know, if you're a business person and you get a tax audit, let's just say you're in an audit of some type, right? You see, the meaning is, it's if this goes the wrong way, I'm going to lose everything and I'm going to live on the street and I'm going to go broke. And you actually begin to. You may not say that verbally, but it's like, it's tremendous. It's the worst meaning. Or you can say, listen, this is something I know. We've done things that we need to be able to do. Even if it doesn't go my way, I can come back. I've come back from difficult things before. You attach a meaning to it. When you begin to ask yourself, what do I believe this means? Evaluate that. Attach a correct meaning. That serves you. All of a sudden, you've changed your emotional state. That's number one question to ask yourself. Number two question to ask yourself is just when I want to change my state and how I feel. Quality of the questions. Quality of our emotions, right? Who loves me and who do I love? And just stopping at any given time when you have stress in your life and just taking an inventory of that one thing. Who do I love and who loves me? And I can tell you, just picturing my mom brings me a little bit more peace. And so then I'll think of my children, my family, and my wife and siblings of mine, my sisters and my friends. Your best friends aren't necessarily the people that you have to spend the most time with. They're the people that you have the best time with. Take a second. Who do I love? Who loves me? What are some of those best times? Just give yourself the gift of it for a sec. It'll completely change your state. Ask yourself, who loves me? Who do I love? So, so far we've covered two things. Evaluate and attach the correct meaning to what's going on. A real one, a realistic one, a reasonable one, not some crazy one you couldn't really believe. Evaluate the meaning. That's one way to change your emotions. Number two, just take an inventory real quick of the most important things in life. Who loves me and who do I love? Picture their faces. Give yourself that gift of asking that question. Because guess what happens when you ask that question? That's what you pay attention to. Number three is about attention. What am I paying attention to? What you pay attention to is the most critical question you can ask yourself. Are you paying attention to what you possess or what you have or what you lack or don't have. We are constantly looking for what we don't possess, as opposed to having an appreciation and putting our attention on what we do have. Because they're two totally different perspectives. If you ask yourself that question, what do I have right now? What do I possess? When possessions don't mean things necessarily, it could be a thing, it could be money, it could be a house, but it could be you're in possession of one of the most wonderful relationships in the world, you're in possession of whatever your faith is, what do you have? And when you focus on what you possess and have, as opposed to what you lack, you're happy, you're more blissful. If you live a life where you are constantly focused on what you don't possess, and I'm not talking about just things, friends, relationships, emotions, money, right answers to things. You focus on what you don't have. That's a vast space compared to the things you do have. But when you begin to change your attention, what you pay attention to is what you do have, it changes everything. And when you live a life which is by about 95% of people I know, this is me too, most of the time, time, until I've changed this of what I don't have or what I don't possess, in your case, I would ask you, do you focus on what you don't possess or what you do possess? Because when you begin to become grateful for what you do possess, the relationships, the cherished moments, memories, your health, whatever it might be, you live a life of real bliss. But if you have that mindset where what you're always paying attention to is what you don't have and what you want, what you don't possess, you could end up having a whole bunch of possessions. You could have great people around you, amazing relationships that you cherish, and great physical possessions and money and still be unhappy because you're paying attention to what you don't have. The happiest people put their attention on what they do possess, not what they don't. It changes everything. And that's why you have to ask yourself about the meaning of an event. Number one. That's why you got to focus on who you love and who loves you. This directs your attention. These are questions that help direct your attention. So ask yourself this upfront. Do I spend most of my time focusing on what I do possess? The relationships, the loved ones, the material things, the ideas, the thoughts, my health, my faith, or do I spend most of my time focusing on what I don't possess and trying to acquire it? Fourth question to ask yourself, what will this matter in five years? When you change your frame of reference, see, if something's really stressing you, just ask yourself, in five years, will this matter? Will this matter in five years? And if that doesn't work, will this matter in 50 years and you'll change your perspective on something? Sometimes we make something such a big deal, such a big stress, but when you begin to just step back and say, is this going to matter in five years? You get a perspective on it that allows it to be reduced to its proper influence over you right now, again, as I cover these things, that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to problems. We're going to get to that in a minute. There's the answers here. This isn't Pollyanna, but imagine this. What if you took this tool basket I've given you of the five, and you start to evaluate, what meaning did I attach to this? Does meaning serve me? Is this meaning I've attached accurate, truthful, real? Or am I off base on this meaning I've attached to it? It's killing my emotional state. If I change the meaning, could I change me right now? And if I got really good at always attaching the right meaning to something, could I change my life? Number five question to ask yourself, what can I control about this and what can't I control? It's one of the most powerful questions on earth. Because when you start to really have manic thoughts or just thoughts that don't serve you or stress in your life, you really have lost control of your thoughts. And successful people, happy people, delineate, distinguish between what can I control and what's out of my control. And this is probably something as a control freak, somebody who likes to control everything. Another one of these things I've struggled with. That's why I have this great list, because I really struggle with all seven of these. And at any given time, when I've got all seven of these clicking the right way, I have a totally different quality of life. And so ask yourself, what can I control about this? And then filter out all the things you can't control. And by the way, surrender all the things you can't control. Give them up. Give them up to God. Give them up. Or just give them up altogether. If you're not a believer in God, which I recommend, you believe in God, but if you don't, you just got to give them up. Because it doesn't serve you. You're literally worrying, stressing, obsessing over things you cannot control. By the way, here's a good one. You can't control people. You can't control other people's behaviors. You can't control other people's reactions. So if you begin to surrender all of that and just focus on what you can control, you're way ahead. Here's the other thing. Like many of you know that my dad ended up was a recovering alcoholic drug addict, ended up being sober the rest of his life. And one of the most powerful parts of that program is their idea of knowing, having the wisdom to know the difference between what you can and cannot control and surrender the rest of it. And so that's number five, which leads to number six. This is real stuff here. What's the one catalyst, decision or action I could take right now that would reduce this issue the most dramatically or eliminate it? What's the catalyst decision number six or action? There's typically one decision or one action. If you took it, it could eliminate this problem altogether. What's the one action, the one decision I could do that would go to the biggest impact on either eliminating or reducing this stress, this problem, this issue right now. And then you go about doing it. And then seven. Last question is, what perspective do I need to have on this? Perspective is different than meaning. Perspective is reviewing your life and asking yourself this. If I've been through worse than this and I survived, what's the worst case scenario? There's nothing wrong with asking yourself, what's the worst case scenario? So I call seven the perspective question. And the perspective first is to look at the rest of your life and go, look, I've been through harder than this. I've been through worse than this. If that's true, maybe that's not the issue. Maybe you haven't been. Maybe this could be the worst thing. Then you've got to ask yourself is, what's the worst case scenario? I think a lot of times we literally play these games in our head. We're like, if this happens, I'll die. Live on the street. Probably not. Probably not. And if it is you've been diagnosed with something that could cause that, then I think the perspective question becomes finding someone who's got it worse than you. My grandmother used to tell me, she goes, eddie, no matter what you're going through, somebody's always got it worse. And sometimes it's just asking yourself, you know, and being grateful for the fact that maybe I don't have it. That bad. And so sometimes just getting a little bit of perspective for how blessed you are. And then I have these other friends that are incredible at this, that have had cancer diagnosis, and they'll say, eddie, I'm blessed. You know, I don't have this or that or the other thing. And so every once in a while, just giving yourself a perspective question of maybe you've been through worse than this, right? If that's not true, and this is the worst thing you've gone through, and then if that doesn't help you, then you gotta search and have some perspective on someone's probably got it worse than you or has had it worse than you. And to be grateful for the little great things you do have going in your life. What's the meaning you need to attach to the event? Change the meaning, you change the emotions, you change your life. Number two, focus for a minute on who loves you and, and who you love. Third, pay attention to what you do possess, not what you lack. Fourth, what impact will this have in five years? Get some, some concepts, some perspective based on that, right? Number five, what can I control and what can't I control? And surrender what you cannot. Number six, once you figure out what you can control, what's the one catalyst decision, the one catalyst action that if I get that done, the dominoes are going to fall in my favor? And then seven is the perspective question. Don't you think about this just for a second. Where you come from, in order to be born, you needed two parents. This is where you come from. Just think this through, how miraculous it is that we got to you, that you exist. You needed two parents. You needed four grandparents. That means you had eight great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, 32 third great grandparents, 64 fourth great grandparents, 128 fifth great grandparents. 256 six great grandparents, 512 seventh great grandparents, and 1024 eighth great grandparents. Over the past 12 generations, spanning about 400 years, you needed a total of about 4,094 ancestors to come into existence. You are the result of thousands of lives, choices and sacrifices that came before you. In many of your cases, you come from absolute bravery in your ancestry, tragedy, atrocities that have happened. I know you're very, very proud of maybe where you come from or your ethnicity or maybe your parents or great grandparents. But have you ever thought about the thousands of lives that had to exist, that were shaped to you and now we're to you? This reminds us of how precious and unique just our existence is. It's a gift shaped by generations of ancestors. I want to challenge you today to just give that some thought. These thousands of people that are yours, that you've never met before, that lived lives before you, that their cell memory passed on to you. The scriptures talk about the sins of the Father and the blessings moving through generations and that no matter what's happened in your family in this generation, you can change your bloodline forever. You can in every family. I talk about there being the one that changes a family. I want to challenge you with these 4,000 ancestors of yours that's led to today to honor their legacy by living with purpose and gratitude. Because someday someone's going to be thousands of people removed from you. You know, I've been having these dreams the last year about my granddaughter. She's not been born in as far as I know. Neither one of my kids are even close to having a baby. But I've been having these dreams about her. And I've been thinking about all the things I do every day and how that's going to impact her life. And just the legacy of what I do every day, what you do every day, and how this thing is much bigger than us. We forget that, don't we? Don't we forget how much bigger this is than us? I know I do from time to time. And what a blessing it is. And so time is the greatest blessing. Youth is the greatest blessing. No matter what age you are, you're as young and as healthy as you're ever going to be. And having some understanding of how incredible this moment is that you're not one of the 80% of the people that live on earth today that don't have clean water, that you've had three meals today and I know you go, yeah, that's great, I've heard this, you know. I know I got a blanket and a place to live. No, you don't. The things that you worry about every single day that you have made larger than life that are stealing your joy, that seems so big in this moment that won't matter at all 10 years from now or on your deathbed. You let rule your life, you let become these big huge things when 4,000 people had to exist for just to get to you. And someday you're going to have that granddaughter or great granddaughter that looks to your legacy. Some of them won't even ever know you, but you will have made a difference in their lives. You will have changed their bloodline forever. And to understand what a blessing it is to be alive in this moment, have a shot, have Some hope. Have a gift. I've had multiple friends in the last several weeks. One of my dearest friends just found out that she's got. She had melanoma and she's got this precious family. And prior to that, she'd been going through some real things in her life. And it's just perspective on what really matters in life. So I'm having a bad day. Compared to what? Someone today woke up and lost the love of their life, right? Someone didn't wake up today. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5, verse 10, and that the God of all grace, who's called you to his eternal glory in Christ after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you firm and steadfast. Life can be heavy, but if you'll just wait around long enough, it's not unbearable, right? When it feels unbearable, pain will linger. And prayers can be answered in your life. But take heart. Suffering is not the end of your story. Here's the truth. You're playing with house money. You can't lose. He already died for me. The case has been made. I'm just running up the score. By the way, I know how a lot of you like I get these measures. Ed. I'm slipping. It's like a rope. I'm slipping. It's slipping. I'm feel like I'm slipping. Tie a knot. Tie a knot and hold on for a while. Please, I'm serious. You don't always have to be climbing. Sometimes you got to tie the knot and just hold on. When it feels like life's slipping away. This left you. That relationship's gone, that money's gone, that business is gone. Tie a knot and hold on for one more day. The power of one more is real. My book is real. Tie a knot, hold on for one more day. Catch your breath and then start climbing again. Just don't quit for one more day. You got one more in you. I can promise you the greatest blessing of your life is one more day. You know, when my dad got cancer, my dad was a man's man. I'll never forget. If you hear my voice, my dad had. My voice had this deep voice. And my dad got cancer. And he says, hey, look, I just got to tell you, here's what's happened and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to fight it once. That's what he told me. I'm going to fight it once. I'll do the chemo thing, the surgery. I'll fight it one time. But Eddie, I'm not going on one of these year after year, you get all shriveled up, you're getting sick, your hair, all that. I'm not doing that whole routine, but I will fight it once. And I remember saying, hey, dad, that's fair. I actually understand that. I might not either, but I will fight it once is what my dad said. That's not what happened. He fought it for eight years, and everything that he said he didn't want to have happen happened. I'd go, dad, why are you going through this? You literally said you'd only do it once, that you didn't want to go through all this suffering. And he goes, eddie, I'm not suffering. I'm in pain. But suffering, you choose. I'm not suffering. I got to have dinner with mom again tonight. That's not suffering. I'm in some pain. He goes, here's what I didn't know. Son, please remember this, and I'm going to share this with you. The words of a man dying of cancer. He said, here's what I didn't know, man. I get emotional telling you this. He goes, I didn't know what it would be like to actually face not having one more day with my family. Sounds good in theory. You know, I'll fight it once, but I'm not gonna. And he goes, until I realized I won't get to have another night with your mom. I won't have one more time to talk to you, my best friend. I won't talk to my daughters or see them or hug my daughters, because you know you'll do anything to get one more day once you're threatened to not have one. One more day with your family. Because, Eddie, I'll do anything. And so the greatest gift is one more day with your family. Don't wait around until you're threatened with not getting anymore to realize that, listen, here's the truth. You get the life, you focus on. If you want a life where it's stress and worry and down and you're a victim and it's pain and it's depressing, you can get it. Just look around for it. It's there. Or you can have a life of blessing and gratitude and bliss. And I'm not saying you can't even have both, because I don't live on the side where I just get all the good. I get a little bit of both. I like the contrast. I do see pain and hurt. It was horrible when my dad passed away. It has been horrible struggling with my health this Year. But I got another day. I got to wake up and see my beautiful family. I got to wake up and do this with you today. I have way more than I would ever ask for in my life. By the way, look how far you've come. I'm talking to you. Look how far you've already come. Look what you've already overcome in your life. Just look at you. You're frickin incredible. You'll give yourself enough credit now. Am I saying accept everything about you that's not any good? Absolutely not. But your filter of life matters. Have you forgotten all you've overcome already? Have you forgotten all you've been through and still standing? Maybe a little wobbled, maybe a little hurt, more injured than you've ever been, Maybe wounded, but you're still standing. You still got one more Day. These 4,000 people's lives, generation after generation after generation after generation after generation that sacrificed and suffered probably for you to be here. And I promise you, 20 years from now, you'll trade everything that you have 20 years from now to come back to this moment, right now, and to be you again and to be young. There's so much for you to be blessed about. I want you to know this. Everything you need is within you to be happy and to win. You've just got to dig it out, you've got to find it, you got to tap into it. And you cannot tap into that when you are in victim mode. You cannot tap into that when you're licking your wounds. You tap into that when you're in gratitude, when you're in strength, when you walk boldly with your faith, whatever your faith is, just listen to me right now. I'm going to express it through my faith. But out of respect to you, I say this to you with whatever your faith is, but in my faith as a Christian, his hands are not just holding you, they're rebuilding you. The storm you are facing will not destroy you, it will refine you. The clouds clear, they go away. The darkness eventually dissipates and you're going to end up standing much bolder, much more steadfast, much stronger, a whole lot more confident when this thing blows over. And just know this, he's never going to let you go. You're in the palm of his hand at any time, all the time. Just hold on. Tie the knot. Hold on for one more day. God is working in your life. He is going to shape something beautiful out of this mess, out of your trials, out of your tribulations. Your trial is a Trial. He is trying you. You say, well, why is it that we have to go through these things? All that stuff's answered later. All I know is I think it's to draw us closer to him. All I know is that other people are depending on you. There's someone out there right now who's depending on you, stepping up, that needs you. Maybe it's someone in your family. Maybe it's someone in your friend circle. Maybe it's a client or a customer. Maybe it's somebody you haven't met yet and won't meet for a decade. God's infinite wisdom, he's holding you in this hand, going, I'm going to turn this into something awesome. But you got to believe that. And you got to hold on. It's not slipping away. You're stronger than you think. This is going to rebuild you. You are going to be remade. There is a purpose to your pain. Look for it, my beautiful friend. You're a miracle, right? Isn't this cool? And right now, in a thought, you can change your life. In one decision, you can change your life. You're one decision away from changing your life. Remember this. Your decisions shape your destiny. Your decisions shape your destiny. You can make a whole new decision right now to see a different life, to focus on a different life, to make different decisions, to change that filter. You can make a decision today to change your mindset, to work on you, to rise from the ashes of where you are. You can make a decision that you're blessed, that you're favored, that there's a purpose to your pain. Or you can just let the world come at you some more. You can be a victim. You can just always react all the rest of your life rather than step up and start dictating the terms. By the way, I have news for you. You're not getting out of this alive. It ends for all of us the same way, so we know the end. What we don't know is what happens between now and then. And hopefully you do know what happens after. But in the meantime, all we have is this moment right now. And it's a beautiful moment. It's a blessed moment. And so many people have sacrificed for you to be here today. Will you sacrifice for the next generation? Will you sacrifice for them? Will you make a difference? See, the pain of what you're going to go through to make your dreams come true is so much less than the pain you will feel if you don't. Lifelong regret to get to the end of a life and look back on it, and it's a life unlived, a life out of fear is a tragedy. I said this in last week's show, but I want to reiterate this to you. When you get to the end of your life, you will not regret the things you tried and failed at. You're going to regret the things that you didn't try. I think you'll regret that you didn't have more faith, more gratitude, and more belief. At some point in your life, you have to decide that you're gonna be your own biggest fan, your own biggest supporter, that you're gonna talk to yourself like you would talk to your best friend, that you're gonna believe in yourself like you would believe in your children. Because you only have one. You. You were born with a responsibility to start with, to take care of one human being. You. You're the person you were born to take care of. In fact, you really can't care in your full capacity for other people, if you don't care for yourself. You can't transfer to someone that which you are not really experiencing. You really can't. You could transfer a little bit, but you can't give them all of it. Your job is to take care of you. You were given you to take care of, to believe in, to nurture, to grow, to push, to love, to challenge, to celebrate, to laugh with, to comfort. If you don't give that to you, and you only get that through God, you can't really give it to other people in the way that you should. So many of you live with an enemy within you. You've taken the mistakes of your past, and you use them as weapons against yourself. You're constantly hitting yourself over the head with this mistake or that setback or this thing. And you keep carrying these bricks with you through your life. It's almost like you want to keep reminding you of your own weaknesses, your own sins, your own mistakes. And the adversary's got you convinced that means you're not going to win. And the truth of the matter is, God wants to use these mistakes, these setbacks, these things you're ashamed of, these average, ordinary things. These times you felt invisible in your life. He wants to use those somehow in the service of other people. But he can only do that if you overcome it. But when you get to the other side of it, now there's a story, now there's a message. Your mess has a message. Your test has a testimony. Why don't you live it? You were born to do something great with your life. Do not End this thing by not finding out who the heck you are, what the heck you're capable of today is a blessing. You are a blessing. But for this week, will you please step back and have some perspective on how blessed you are, how far you've come, how much you've overcome, and that ought to give you some idea of where you're going. He's rebuilding you. This storm is not going to destroy you. In fact, eventually, at one point, the wind's going to be at your back and you better be in full speed when it happens. Because once that wins at your back and you start knocking down barriers and you start overcoming things and you start getting momentum again in your life, it's going to change other people's lives because you went through what you're going through right now. There was this great study recently that said the top five regrets of the dying, let me tell you what they are. Number one, regret of the dying, they said, I wish I would have stayed in touch more with my friends. Number two, thing they regret, in no order. I wish I would have expressed how I really felt more often. So many people go through their entire lives and don't express how they really feel, the love they feel for somebody, how they're really feeling inside about themselves, how they feel about the people that they work with. Maybe they don't express when they don't want to do something, but they do it anyway. They agree to go to things and participate in things they don't want to do, but they're afraid to express themselves and say, no, I don't really want to do that. Maybe they participated in so much gossip in their lives they wish they would have just expressed, this makes me uncomfortable. I don't like this. They spent time with people they didn't really want to spend time with. They did not tell the people that they loved often enough how much they loved them and what they loved about them. Number three is I wish I would have lived a life more true to myself and not lived by the expectations of others. So many people live a life and a script somebody else handed them. You imagine getting to the end of your life and one of the three biggest regrets of the five, I didn't live a life on my own terms. I let the expectations of other people guide me. By the way, expectations are limiting beliefs. Number four, I wish I would have let myself be happier. Happiness is already within us at any given time. It's part of who we are. But we allow all these other things to blunt it and block it. Stress Worry, depression, fear, anxiety. Instead of just letting happiness be in our lives. People matter. Things don't. Don't ever get out of this life without expressing how you really feel, your beliefs, what you stand for, who you love, why you love them. Live a life on your own terms and not the expectations of others. Go for your dreams. Make something great happen. Let yourself experience happiness. It's your birthright. And number five, I wish I wouldn't have worked so much. We can get really caught up in doing instead of being. And there's a nuance to life of both. Work is one of the great things in my life. It's service. It's an expression of who I am. It's my art form. But at the same time as there's a life away from work. And I think you know that as well. Now, here's the cool part. At the end of your life, I want to have you have the five things you're most grateful for. You're most proud of. The moments, the memories, the contribution, the people, the difference you made, the things you saw and felt and experienced. We don't have to get to the end of our lives with five regrets. We can get to the end of our lives with five things we're most proud of, five things we want to honor, five things we want to pass on to the next generation, five things we want to celebrate. And that's what I want at the end of my life. And it's what I want for you at the end of your life. And hopefully today's show helped you get there. All right, God bless you, everybody. I hope you share today's episode.