This Will Elevate Your Mindset

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is keep moving forward. Over to you, Michelle Obama.

Some of you have been homeless. Some of you have risked the rejection of your families to pursue your education. Many of you have lain awake at night wondering how on earth you were gonna support your parents and your kids and still pay tuition. And many of you know what it's like to live not just month to month or day to day, but meal to meal. But graduates, let me tell you, you should never ever be embarrassed by those struggles. You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it's important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages. And I know that because I've seen it myself, not just as a student working my way through school, but years later when I be— after I came— before I came to the White House and I worked as a dean at a college. In that role, I encountered students who had every advantage. Their parents paid their full tuition, they lived in beautiful campus dorms, they had every material possession a college kid could want— cars, computers, spending money. But when some of them got their first bad grade, they just fell apart. They lost it. Because they were ill-equipped to handle their first encounter with disappointment or falling short. But graduates, as you all know, life will put many obstacles in your path that are far worse than a bad grade. You'll have unreasonable bosses and difficult clients and patients. You'll experience illnesses and losses, crises and setbacks that will come out of nowhere and knock you off your feet. But unlike so many other young people, you have already developed the resilience and the maturity that you need to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep moving through the pain. Keep moving forward.

I think this is a message that entrepreneurs can relate to. One of the things that we have to do to be successful as an entrepreneur is keep moving forward. You have to stay committed to your dream. Even if you do things on the side just to make money, just to get by, you need to keep moving forward and never lose sight of what you're trying to accomplish. Because it's gonna get hard. And a lot of you guys watching this, you know it, like you're living it right now. This might be a terrible day for you right now 'cause you're not achieving what you wanna achieve. And I feel you. I was the guy making $300 a month in my business, struggling, sucking, having a lot of the personal value that I had, feeling of self-worth just sucked out of me because I wasn't feeling like I was adding value to the world. I was feeling like anything I did was just failing and not working. I didn't know how to get out of the hole. So you're gonna get into the hole and it's gonna happen, multiple times on the business side as well as on the, on the personal side, you're going to be in a number of holes. And here's the, here's the difference. You have one or two choices when you're down in the hole. The first one that a lot of people just end up defaulting to is they blame and complain. They blame and complain. You're blaming your parents for not giving you a better education or not being from a better environment. You blame the president because the president's policies, you know, really screwed over your business. You blame that customer for not buying from you even though you think that you had the best option. And you complain, you complain about your situation, you complain about the lack of money in your bank account, you complain about how you open your wallet, there's nothing there. You complain about how you don't have any time. You blame and complain and blame and complain. And as long as you continue to blame and complain, you're gonna stay in that hole where you are and where you deserve to be. And that sucks. The path out, the second option, is you take responsibility. Instead of spending all that time blaming other people and complaining about your situation, use that time and invest it into making the situation better. When you realize that you're in this hole because of you, because you need to do better, because you need to add more value, because you need to be more resourceful, when you take on that responsibility, then things start to happen, then things start to change. And until you do, if you just live in the land of blame and complain, you're never gonna take action, 'cause it's always somebody else's fault. When you realize that it's your fault, First, that sucks, that's a low, but it's also a high in that you realize that if you change, if you add more, if you keep working, you'll climb out. Where if you don't accept that responsibility, you stay down in the hole. And if you look at successful entrepreneurs, you look at the people who've come from nothing and built huge businesses, look at how they started. Most successful entrepreneurs who've gone on to build massive wealth, they started with less than what you already have right now. And quite often, they turn their businesses over to their kids. Well, you look at the entrepreneur founder who had no education and no money, no resources, and just managed to build it out of sheer will when all the odds were stacked against them, build some massive, massively successful company, become massively wealthy, and then they want to hand it over to their kids. And their kids growing up with everything in their favor, with the education, with the money, with the mentors, with the connection, with a great environment, everything in their favor, and they take over the business and they run it down into the ground. Because they blame and they complain instead of accepting responsibility for where they are and being resourceful to climb out. So when you're down in the hole, or maybe you're there right now, what are you gonna do? Blame and complain or accept responsibility? So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what hole are you climbing out of right now? What hole are you in that you're trying to rise up and get to the top? Leave in the comments below. I'm gonna join the discussion. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Ryan Hicks from Taught to Profit. Ryan, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book. It really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, you want a chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.