Commitment to Your Dreams: Les Brown's Blueprint for Refusing to Quit

What's up guys? Today on The Daily Mastermind, welcome back by the way. I want to give you some straight fire. Hey listen, it's late tonight. I had a lot of things going on with meetings. It's about 10 o'clock, but I wanted to give you something tomorrow morning that I thought could really fire you up. You know, you might be getting home after long days. You might be working long hours at work. You might be overwhelmed and having all kinds of things happen in your life. But I want to share some information from you today. A short message from one of my all-time favorite mentors, Les Brown. This guy is flat fire. I've had the opportunity to work with Les many, many times over the years. We've spent time at dinner, private dinners. And this guy is just the epitome of inspiration and motivation. And so I want to ask you just what is your commitment level to your dreams, to your best life, to your best self? What is your commitment right now? What is your commitment to your absolute best life? You've got to put yourself, Les is going to talk to you about how you put yourself in a position where you are committing to your dreams and you refuse to give up until it happens. You've got to declare your intentions to the universe and you've got to make it happen regardless of fear, hard, you know, the obstacles and things that you've got to deal with. But I'm telling you, Les Brown can bring the energy. This guy, he just absolutely shares some golden nuggets. So take some time, go back to this episode if you need to, to get yourself pumped up. So without any further ado, here's my mentor, Les Brown. What is commitment? Commitment is the salesman who says, look here, I'm going to make $1,000 today and I'm not going home. You can turn the lights out. The janitors could be here running the vacuum cleaner. I'm not leaving here till I do it. I used to be a door-to-door salesman. I had X number of TVs. I had a minimum amount that I knew I had to sell every day in order to provide for my mother, who was ill at the time, who had lost her job at the M&M cafeteria because of arthritis. And I said, I'm going to go door to door. And sometimes I would not come home until one o'clock at night, knocking on people door, people closing. What do you want? Would you like to buy a nice working month's television set? No, no money down. No. What about an Emerson TV? No. Thank you very much. Do you know anybody else that would be interested? No! Thank you very kindly. Knock on another. Hello? Would you like to buy a nice working television set? No money down? No Get away from our door Thank you very kindly Do you know anybody else that would be Yeah my cousin he lives two doors down Thank you very kindly I tell him you sent me When I had your cousin told me that you wanted to buy a television set told me to come here and talk to you We got a special discount for you. Yes, come in. I'm interested. I would just keep right on. I would not go home until I did it. It's an interesting thing, ladies and gentlemen, that when we put ourselves in a situation where we say we're going to do it, it puts you in another zone where the universe responds to you. When you have that kind of consciousness, see the universe responds to the man or woman that refuses to be denied because that is your commitment. That business that you want, that book you want to write, that dream that you have of controlling your destiny. That is yours. That power to create that and to manifest that, that is yours. That's available to you, but you've got to be willing to stand there and face disappointment, not have support. Be lonely. Doubt yourself sometimes. Be rejected again and again and again. Become bankrupt if necessary again and again and again, and refuse to turn around until life gives it up. Nothing can resist a person that has that kind of commitment. The people that have made a difference on the planet. When a John F. Kennedy said, we will go to the moon in the next decade, he spoke it. That was a commitment and people shared that vision. People bought into that. We've had all kind of examples in history where people have made declarations who have committed their lives to bring about a difference. There are people who are taking a stand today against hunger. I guarantee you it will be a part of our past at some point in time. Someone took a stand against polio. It no longer plagues us as it once did because someone said it is my commitment to eradicate it from the face of the earth. Someone made the commitment. The reason that we're here and enjoying the democracy that we have. Someone made a commitment that whatever is required. If it means that I die, I remember Paul Robeson, here I stand for I can do no other. And that's how you must be. Commitment means standing up for your life. It means honoring yourself. It means beginning to say and to see and recognize your alignment and oneness with the universe And that you are a channel for life to express through And we short with anger We short it with fear We short-circuit it with envy. We short-circuit it by being lazy or apathetic or giving up easily. Why, why, why? We say, oh, it's too hard. It's too hard. We don't challenge our spirit. Ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing as powerful as the human spirit. You can't destroy it. You can pervert it, but you can't destroy. I was reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. What a powerful book. I'm reading it now for the seventh time. And he gives so many graphic examples of the power of the human spirit. And so what are some of the things that can fortify us and give us the kind of inner strength that will allow us to forward ourselves into the future by manifesting our commitments. Number one, commitment means in some cases going back to school, getting some training, sitting up in classes with people younger than you, putting yourself in a position where you don't know and that is awkward and uncomfortable, but because of your commitment to develop yourself or to go back to school to get a high school diploma or to get a college degree, that it doesn't matter. Feeling dumb and saying, what am I doing here? Sitting up in some boring class. Commitment can mean a lot of things. It could mean that you begin to go back. You got to back up sometimes. It means to back up and not give up, to regroup, back up and regroup and come back again because life has waylaid you because you got knocked down. See, I know when I was working on my dream, there were times I lost my house at one point. I lost my car. I was broke. My credit was bad. I was sleeping at different friends' houses on their couch or on the floor. There were times monks that I slept on the floor of my office and got up early and dressed before my staff got there to give them the impression that I got there early before they did. And we all pretend not to know what we knew that the boss was staying in the office. So we never talked about it. But I refuse. I refuse to give up on my dream And what happens They say you know in the prosperous years you put it in your pocket In the lean years you put it in your heart It makes me appreciate it even more. Even more. I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The disappointment, the pain that I've gone through by keeping the commitment, keeping the commitments that you have might mean taking a stand that's unpopular. something was said one time, when you take a position, it says cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Politics asks the question, is it popular? But conscience or commitment asks the question, is it right? And see, most people rather operate from the first two. Is it safe for me to take this position? I remember when I was a state legislator, I saw guys and women who believed in legislation very strongly, but because the Speaker of the House said, we won't go with that, they backed down. And they felt bad about it. They wouldn't take the position because they didn't want the Speaker of the House to be angry at them. They wanted to be all right with all of the rest of our colleagues. See, it takes a great deal of strong courage and commitment on your part to step out a line. You know, Henry David Thoreau said, If a man doesn't keep pace with his companions, perhaps he's listening to the beat of a different drummer. Let him dance to the music that he hears, however measured or far apart. When you are committed, you're dancing to the beat of a different drummer. Don't expect people to understand you. Don't expect it to make sense to anybody why you've got to do this, why you have got to go, why you leave. This is a good job. I'm going. They pay you well. I'm going. You just a few years from retirement. I'm going. Why? I don't understand. You don't have to. I'm going for me. Because I've made a different kind of commitment with my life. This is something I have got to do. Somebody said to me out in the hall today. She said, thank you. She said, this is my time. Repeat after me, please. This is my time. I'm committing my life to living my dream. Check somebody's hand on your right and left and say, this is your time to do that quickly.