PREPARE for LIFE'S Opportunities | Seize Success

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs are going to solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is prepare yourself for success. Over to you, Dr. Sunday Adelaja. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

I wake up every morning, Success is possible, success is a reality, but the fact is that only people who are well prepared get the blessings of success in life. You know, it's like life is not fair in some extents or in some cases if you look at it just from the surface. And you think that you see some people who are making it, some people who are doing a good job, I mean some people who are really making it in life, and you think what makes these people better than the other people? And it's like there's not really any much difference. But really, there is a difference. If you see anybody that is truly making it, that is really doing a good job, it is only because he's done something right. And the major condition, or the major thing that a person like that has done right, is that they have gotten themselves prepared for the success that they now enjoy. Opportunities come only to people who are prepared for them. If you are not prepared for opportunities, you will never see them. You will think there are no opportunities around you. People complain about the countries they live in, people complain about their leaders, people complain about their environment, and they all complain that there are no opportunities in their countries or in their cities or from their leaders. But really, even in those countries, even in those cities, there are people who are having opportunities, who are, you know, being entrusted by life by great positions of opportunities because they are prepared for them.

So if you want to be successful, you have to do the work to be prepared for it when it comes to you. Success doesn't just land on your lap. Opportunities don't just open themselves up to you. You have to do the work. It doesn't come by just sitting on the couch and dreaming and thinking and hoping that something's going to happen to you. It happens because you are out and you are preparing and you are doing the work. So as an example, I look at Lily, who was one of my salsa instructors, still is, and I offered her a full-time opportunity to quit her job and start her own business as a new potential speaker with me. And I paid her to leave her job so she can start this opportunity. So she's getting paid to leave her job, she's getting mentoring from me to launch her own business. And a lot of people would think, "Well, how do I get that opportunity? How do I get that chance to do it? You're so lucky that you get this thing that nobody else gets." But she did the work to prepare for it. She was putting in hustle and energy and heart. And from one of the first times that I met her and had our conversation, I said, I want to do something with you. We're going to figure out a way to get some kind of business to happen together. And she might have thought I was crazy the first time that we had that conversation.

During the meeting, he told me that he really liked me and he wanted to start some sort of business with me. So my first thought was, wow. He is so nice, and what an amazing confidence booster for me.

But she worked at it, and she prepared, and she put in hours and effort consistently, and that's the difference. If you look at anybody who's had major success, look at anybody who you look up to as an entrepreneur, as an athlete, as a singer, whatever you aspire to do, there is always a ton of hard work that goes alongside it. You will not get the success you're after by just sitting on the couch. And when an opportunity does come to you, you have to say yes to it. Before I offered Lily this position, I actually offered a different position to somebody else, to a guy who I was gonna start a marketing agency with, and he said no. He said he wasn't ready to quit his job. He didn't jump on that opportunity, and so I had the space to offer to Lily. If he said yes, to that opportunity 3 months sooner, I wouldn't have been able to give it to Lilly because my time would have been taken up. But he said no, he stayed on his corporate path, and Lilly said yes. So when those opportunities come, and when they're scary, and when you're not sure how it's gonna work out, do you seize it or not? Or do you live the rest of your life in regret wondering what might have happened? So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the thing that you are doing consistently to prepare yourself for success? How much are you working on your dream, on your goal, every single day to make sure that it happens? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm super curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to John Jenkins. John, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and making that YouTube video about it, man. I really appreciate it, and I thank you for the support. I'm glad you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever you're Your one word is much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

<LYRICS>I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.</LYRICS> I wake up about 4:30 and 5:00, and between 5:00 and 5:15, I am working on email, catching up on news, looking at the blogs, looking at the different opinions. Because people just don't sleep. I mean, they're working 24/7. Somewhere around the world, people are awake and working. So you're always constantly being bombarded with request information or just sometimes, uh, news. And so in the morning I wake up and I, uh, you know, take care of my mind. And then after that I work out, and that's taking care of my body. And then I do meditate before I go to work, so that takes care of my soul. You know, business is like a war. You have to be completely prepared. And unless you have mind, body, and soul really all ready for it, you just can't fight that battle.

How often do you find when you get on set people are like, do the Samuel— do the Sam Jackson thing, do the Samuel L. Jackson thing that we know and love?

Not often. No, I, I don't know what that is. I mean, unless it say motherfucker like 8 times, you know, in a, you know, well-crafted place. But, um, I mean, I don't really know what that is, or to me, the Sam Jackson thing is I've read the script, you know, I don't know how many times, and I've broken my character down the way I learned to break a character down in the theater. If there's source material, like for George Washington Williams, I'll go to the source material and deal with that. But if not, then okay, it's up to me to figure out who this guy is. I can figure out when he was born, who his parents were, what his educational background is, military, if he has that, what kind of life experiences he's had, how he feels about this, that, or the other, even down sometimes to what kind of food he eats, you know, just because there are eating scenes in the movie and I want to figure out what I want to eat when I'm, you know, in that particular scene. And then from scene to scene, what my relationship is with those characters or what I'm trying to accomplish in this scene that leads to the next scene that leads to the next scene that leads to the next scene. So what happens is the Sam Jackson thing for me, according to my agents and managers, is I'm so prepared when I show up that I expect everybody else to be as prepared as I am. So when a director does not have a shot list for that day, or director's floundering and trying to figure out what he's doing, he can ask me and I can tell him, you know, because One of the funny things about movies is the director is usually the person on the film set that's got the least amount of experience of everybody there.

True. A director makes one movie every 4 years, every 2 years.

Yeah. An actor makes 7 movies. A good director's career is 15 movies. Yeah. You know, everybody here has done 15 movies in the last 2 years. You know, so we all know, you know, Why the fuck you shooting that? That ain't gonna be in the movie. You know, it's like, you don't really need that shot, dude. You don't need that shot. Yeah, it's like, so there's, there's that shit going on. Where did I digress from?

No, that was amazing.

What are you saying?

I don't care. I digress from somewhere, but I show up prepared. So to me, that's the Sam Jackson thing. When you hire me, you've hired an actor who's going to show up who's gonna know his lines, who's gonna hit his marks, and do his best to make the other actors around him better.

Absolutely.

I'm not gonna call shots for you, and I don't expect you to give me a line reading. And if you do, you hired the wrong motherfucker.

With Doubt, which might be the first time that people in film necessarily really appreciated what you were doing, your The preparation for that was astronomical, amazing. And so as the last pre-help question, if I can just ask you, just to show the kind of work that you're willing to do for even, I think it was 8 minutes of screen time, which was deservedly rewarded with an Oscar nomination, but I mean, that is not a ton to work with, and yet you made the most of it. How did you, what did you do to prepare for that one?

Well, it's based on a play, so I read the play, and after I read the play, I said, "I don't even understand this woman." I don't know why this got all this attention. This woman wants to sacrifice her son and da da da da da. And I had all the kind of responses that you would have with character that you didn't understand. But it's being an actor, you have to do investigative work. You have to, you have to make sure that when people are in the audience, they understand you. They ultimately feel something. And so I had to write a bio which ended up being over 100 pages. I talked to people who had seen the play 'cause I was doing a play at the same time and never saw the play. I read the script probably, I don't know how many times. So I literally studied the script for 4 months before I finally got it. Like I had the aha moment. And the aha moment is we always want to feel that decisions are pretty. We always want to believe that decisions are easy. And sometimes they're a Sophie's Choice, you know. And sometimes a person's motivations are absolutely pure, but to the outside eye, they look very dysfunctional. And I probably, you know, had the aha moment 2 days before I even started filming. And I was really waiting for that aha moment because I said, I'm gonna be opposite Meryl Streep and she's gonna tear me a new a-hole and I do not want to look bad. So, um, but I had that aha moment. But I did my, I did my work with that. I can't emphasize that enough. You know, because I, I never want anyone to dismiss my talent. Listen, I may get up on this screen and there are times when I may stink because it's occupational hazard to not always be good, but I never want anyone to say that she's not an actress.