"Only the STRONG SURVIVE!" - Eric Thomas (@Ericthomasbtc) - #Entspresso

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Lily and my one word is extraordinary. I believe that every single human being is capable of extraordinary things when they embrace who they truly are. So to help you on your journey, today's message is push through. Over to you, Eric Thomas.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

I wake up every morning, If there's anything in life that you don't currently have right now, it's because of who you are and how you think. Come on, right now you saying, "E.T., man, you talking to me, man. I'm going through some type of pain. I'm ready to quit and give up." Let me see your hand. "I'm ready to quit and give up." Let me see your hand. "Something in life I'm ready to quit on and give up on." Come on, raise your hand high. "I'm ready to quit on it. I'm ready to give up on it." Come on, raise it up. All right, what I need you to do is I need you to find a reason to keep going. And if you can find a reason to keep going, I know you strong enough to do it 'cause you human. And every human has what it takes to get past whatever they going through. If they decide to push through it. Push through it. Tragedy and trials come to everybody. Only the strong survive. My wife, I watched my wife when she got diagnosed. I watched my wife have terrible days and she probably missed 2 days of work the whole time she had MS. I watched her go to work and I'm like, boo, why in the world would you get up and go to work? You don't even need the money. Why would you do it? It's cold. It's 10 degrees in Michigan and your MS flare up when it's cold. What are you doing? She said, I can't see my daughter, I can't have my daughter see me weak. 'Cause my daughter gonna be married one day and my daughter gonna face tragedy one day and I have to show her how to do it. And so I get up and get dressed and I go to work every day so my baby girl can know how to get through trials. 'Cause one day she ain't gonna be under our roof and she gonna have to do it alone. And I don't wanna talk, I wanna model what it looks like. My daughter got on the prayer line, she was at prayer meeting the other day. Told her testimony, she's like, yo, I ain't even feel like going to school. I ain't feel like walking a mile to go to class. And I thought about it, my mom got a chronic illness, and if my mom in her 40s can get up with a chronic illness and go to work, why surely I can get up at 18 years old and go to class. It worked, it worked, it worked. Listen to me very closely, y'all running from obstacles when in fact it's the obstacle that's going to take you to the next level. Like y'all running from pain, y'all running challenges. You telling me how difficult your life is. Do you understand it is the difficulty that's gonna prepare you and take you to that next level? Why do you keep crying? Why me, God? Why did I get MS? Why did I get cancer? Why did my mama die? Why did I get fired? Do you understand? Listen, you got through that, you got put through that because what that does, that tension produces greatness. Stop running from it and run to it. Come on, y'all, y'all gotta hear me. The reason why you do what you do is more critical than what you do. And if why you do what you do is weak, I need you to go back and start all over again because if your reasoning is weak, you're not gonna get it done.

Why?

Because life is going to beat you upside your head and I'm gonna tell you this, I don't care who you are and what profession you in, before you blow up, life will strip you to the core but if you weak, you will be broke and I'm not here because I'm the best, I'm here because they tried to break me and they couldn't.

If you wanna be successful, have a huge goal, wanna make a massive impact in this world, you will be required to push through. Whatever that looks like for you, whether if it's pushing through pain, fear of failure, fear of rejection, whatever it is, you have to keep going. Too many people give up too easily. They have this big mission, these beautiful ideas, but at the first sight of hardship, you give up. And if you look at anyone who we have covered on this channel, the person that you look up to, 99% of the time they will tell you that they have faced massive adversities during their journey, but they kept persevering pushing through. Because if they hadn't, they wouldn't be successful, and you probably wouldn't even know them because they wouldn't be who they are today. I think about my own life, and I think about how lucky I was to be born poor, to be an immigrant in this country, to be the poorest kid in my school, to not have the things that I wanted when I was a child. And I'm telling you all of these things, you're probably wondering, "Oh, that's crazy. That doesn't seem that lucky. That seems really unfortunate." And the reason why I think I'm lucky is because I know how it's like to be on the other side. I know what the alternative is. I know how it's like to be made fun of because I was poor when I was a kid, which is what made me develop my grit and hustle to keep working. When I was 13 years old, I got a job at a restaurant serving breakfast, which required me to wake up at 5 AM in the morning. And let me tell you, as a 13-year-old— maybe you're a 13-year-old watching, or you have a 13-year-old, or you have been 13— You know that no 13-year-old wants to wake up at 5 AM on the weekends to go serve breakfast. You know, I wanted to do things what other 13-year-old kids do. Like, they want to go to the mall, they want to hang out with their friends, but I didn't do any of that. And it was painful. It was so hard for me, and it was also embarrassing because I didn't want to tell my friends. So all of that was just a terrible experience. But what kept me going and pushing through was knowing what the alternative was. Knowing that if I didn't do this, I would continue to be poor. Even at that age, I knew that I wanted something much bigger than what I was at that time. I wanted to become the best version of myself. I wanted to afford luxurious things. You know, to me at the time was a nice pair of shoes because all my shoes were hand-me-downs and secondhand I bought at garage sales. I wanted a nice pair of minty shoes. That's what I wanted. So that's what kept me going at the age of 13. And now it's 20 years later, and I'm so glad I experienced that at 13, even though I hated every moment of it. I was so glad that I did that because it did— I developed a skill to have the perseverance that I require today as an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, you are going to be challenged in ways that you've never been challenged before if you're working working for someone else, because everything is on you. You guys see me standing on TEDx, speaking in front of all of these people, and yes, that is a beautiful celebration, and I loved every single moment of it. But what you don't see are all the rejection emails that I got from the TEDx places telling me that I didn't get it, telling me that my idea is not good enough, that maybe I should try next year. And I could have easily given up and said, "You know what, maybe this thing is not for me." You know, the rejection— there's only so much rejection someone can take before they snap and give up. But I kept going because I always know what the alternative is. The alternative is that I do not meet my mission. My mission is to build a world where we can all move towards our truest potential. And if I'm not doing it, How can I possibly inspire others to do the same? What a waste of life that would be for me. And that pain is so painful that it surpasses any immediate pain of rejection or failure or anything that I have, and it helps me keep going. For you, maybe you're going through some tough time right now, and I understand life gets hard. Life is not all about roses and cupcakes and unicorns and fancy stuff. Life gets real and it gets hard. Maybe you're going through a failure right now. Maybe you're going through your 30th failure and you just want to give up. It's too hard. And I'm going to tell you, please do not give up. You have to keep going. And I know, you know, there are certain things that you feel like, "I'm just not passionate about it. I'm going to give up." That's fine. By all means, give up on those. And move on to the next as quickly as possible. But if there's something in your heart, in your gut, and you really want it so passionately, like you feel like you can't breathe without it, do not give up on it at all, especially when things get really hard. Because what is the alternative for you? Remind yourself of the alternative. If your dream is to be a fitness trainer and inspire millions of people to become fit, and you want to end obesity And if you don't push through and go to the gym at 5 AM in the morning that you're required to do so because you're too tired because you've been working all day, what is the alternative for you? The alternative for you is that people are going to continue to die from obesity and you could have helped them and you didn't. And you were not able to meet your dream and being the fitness instructor inspiring millions of people. Now, how does that feel? Pretty painful, right? And that pain is going to push you through and help you wake up early in the morning, go to the, go to the gym, wherever you need. And that's just an example. There's so many other things that people want. And I know you're drawn to this channel because you have a big mission, because you want to inspire people, because you want to look up to people who inspire others. You have a mission inside of you, and if you give up, the alternative really, really is painful and it sucks. And finally, the question of the day is, what is that one thing that you do to help yourself push through? Please leave in the comments below, and hopefully by leaving all the comments, you're gonna help someone else and motivate them to push through as well. And of course, I'm going to be sure to join in on the discussion as well. I have a special shout out for Skip Pritchard. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of Evan's book, Your One Word, and tweeting about it. Your support means a lot to us, and I really hope you've enjoyed the read. And thank you so much for watching. I believe in you, and I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. And we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. Between those things, you also went to Broadway with Julia Roberts, with Paul Rudd, 3 Days of Rain. That must have been pretty special.

Yeah, it was a do-or-die moment for me, actually. I think Kitchen Confidential had gotten canceled, you know, and I remember thinking, if this doesn't work, maybe I'm not right for this business, I thought. I thought that— there are moments in life when you think, like, you know what, it kind of does matter if this fails or you fail in it. And it was hard. It was one of the— it was the hardest thing I've ever been through in my far. And I remember thinking, if I can get through this, it may be as hard, but there's— it's impossible for it to be harder. And it's true. And it's— and I've had a lot of hard times since in more jobs, you know, when you're like, wow, the pressure's so intense. But it always— I have such a foundation from Three Days of Rain.

I was gonna say, 8 shows a week, right?

Not even that.

Actually, it was the rehearsal process, not the do. Once we got on stage, it flew. And thank God. And I thought, oh, this feels right. But it was a, you know, and I was hard on myself, you know, but it was just, man, it was tough.

I think being present and enjoying what happened is important. I guess what I'm saying is like, like yesterday I ran, I did an hour and it was, you know, 92 or 93 degrees outside. It was fucking hot, right? But I didn't say like, hey, do I, is this gonna be enjoyable or not? I said, look, this is what I do and come hell or high water, I'm gonna do it. You know, and, and, and, and it was enjoyable. I got— it wasn't enjoyable at first, but I, but I pushed through that. It's like on the other side of that resistance is often that thing. And so I think that's the problem with people who are like, you know, I'll just sort of go with the flow, I'll take it as it happens. That can work, but, um, you know, it's often on the other side of what you're afraid of that you experience really great things. And you have to have the power to push through.

There's different types of people in this world. And one thing that we're all going to deal with is like difficulties in our tasks trying to become successful. As good as things get, you gotta have the same amount of bad that's going to try to impede your progress, whether it be people, whether it be the IRS, whether it be whatever. Something will rear its ugly head and try to block you. Now, a lot of people can't handle that shit. When you have a vision and something or someone throws a curveball, it hurts, it stings, right? It's like your baby, and now I can't put my baby out there like I want to do it. So it really throws people off. They get really negative, they make it depressing, they want to stop, they may want to just go back to their 9 to 5. That's fine, it's not for everybody to push through. But for those who can push through, like he said, the difference between those who really succeed and those who don't are the ones who, when they're faced with whatever these difficulties are, they're like, I'ma keep pushing through. Because it sounds corny and cliché, but it's always sunshine after the rain, you know what I'm saying? Rain don't last that long. You got to know that, be aware of that. That's something you can take with you through everything in life. But in business, you cannot stop because things are not going right at the time, because it's going to happen. I've dealt with it. I'm sure I'll do it again at some point.

Raise your standard. Apple, at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me.

I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 real to success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.