Greatness Demands that You Protect Your Positivity [At All Costs]

To refuse to surrender to apathy by exposing your artistic instincts to the light of day is to really live. We all were ever so creative as kids. Sadly, too many good souls have lost that connection as we have matured into adulthood. To dream and imagine and envision your highest possibilities is to breathe aliveness into your days. My latest book “The Wealth Money Can’t Buy” is full of fresh ideas and original tools that I’m absolutely certain will cause quantum leaps in your positivity, pro...

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma and welcome to Daily Mastery. This is my short form podcast where I'll walk you through the insights, methodologies, and tactics that I've shared with many of the world's most successful people as their mentor, including celebrity billionaires, NBA superstars, world-class artists, and global humanitarians. I hope you find great value in today's episode.

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  The radical optimist's mindset. You know, one of my favorite words these days is "possibilitarian." I've been teaching it for many years, but I'm starting to embrace it in my own life more than ever before. And related to this term, being a "possibilitarian," is some science. And it comes from Ellen Langer, the preeminent researcher and psychologist from Harvard University. And years ago, she came up with this term called "the psychology of possibility." This concept of not being a victim, but being a "possibilitarian," not being a naysayer, but being someone who walks out there full of enthusiasm. You know, if you were to look around the world right now, how many people do you see

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  in the world whose eyes are still sparkling? How many people do you see in the world, they bring on their childlike nature? You know, when you were a little kid, your eyes sparkled, you would dance after a rainstorm. When you listen to music that you loved, you'd start to cry. When you got hurt, you'd start to cry. You pretty much said whatever you want, unfiltered. You wanted to be an astronaut, you wanted to be a billionaire, and you want, well, maybe not a lot of five-year-olds want to be a billionaire, but maybe it's an entrepreneur. You wanted also to be a poet, and you wanted to be a superhero. And then what happened is you left the perfection of childhood, the world, through grownups

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  and media, other teachers and peers, suddenly and incrementally brainwashed you out of your magnificence and your majesty.

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  And your dreams started to die, and your self-faith started to be smothered. And that blazing fire to be an everyday hero, to live a beautiful life, and to stand for love, and mastery, and excellence, and to do your part to build a better world, went out. And you know, you look around the world right now, and a lot of people have resigned themselves to average. A lot of people are half-alive, a lot of people are sort of checked out, a lot of people are numbed out about distraction, a lot of people are medicating themselves with addictions like too much food, too much social media, too much alcohol, too much gossip, too much worry.

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  And what I want you to do, one of my prayers for you, is you strip away any facades and any addictions to mediocrity, and being busy being busy, and you let go of any apathy, and you step into the human being you were built to be.

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  You know, I like simple words, and here are some simple words that the great men and women of the world used to live by. Bravery, sincerity, industry, which is hard work, integrity, and possibility. You know, if you look at the great ones, I always go back to my heroes, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, who said, "You know, if each of us would only sweep our own doorstep, the whole world would be clean."

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  About 10 years ago, I actually went to Mother Teresa's mission in Kolkata. At the time, it was called Calcutta then, I believe. And the guide brought me up to her room where she used to live.

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  And here's what I saw. I saw one window, I saw a Spartan room about not more than a few arm lengths in size. I saw a bed, it was like this sparse metal frame with a very thin mattress over it, and a simple sheet, and I saw a writing desk. And all I'm saying is, if you look at Nelson Mandela, if you look at Mother Teresa, and look at Mahatma Gandhi, who died with under 10 possessions, these people were world changers.

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  These people were radical optimists. These people believed in a cause, and it was so frightening to the status quo that it changed the world. These people suffered, because the root of the word "passion" means to suffer. They suffered for their dream, they suffered for their values, they suffered for their cause, they suffered for their followers, they suffered for their greatness.

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  These people only had a few things, because they had done the interior work to fill any holes of not enoughness. I guess what I'm trying to suggest to you with great love and respect, the great women and men of the world became who they were because they got to a higher level of maturity than most people. And they got to a level of maturity where they were not defined by their things. Their self-identity was not based on their income and net worth and handbag, or their shoes, or their car, or their number of social media followers.

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  These titans of humanity, and these icons of society, these people with these radical optimistic mindsets, who were willing to die for their vision of freedom and justice, got to a level of maturity where they didn't care about things, they cared about people. They didn't care about net worth, they cared about lifting up other individuals. And so I want to leave you with this thought. Where are you on the journey of maturity? There are different levels of maturity.

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  A lot of the so-called leaders in the world, they're suffering from narcissism born of being wounded and hurt little children. And if you have these big gaping holes inside of you emotionally, because your mother didn't love you enough, or your father didn't applaud you enough, or teachers dismissed you, or your friends abused you, then you're going to be an adult in the world. If you have not tended to these emotional scars, you're going to be an adult in the world, trying to take from the world, being negative in the world, being toxic in the world, being all about you taking and getting as much from the world as quickly as you

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  can, because it gives you this transient, this temporary feeling of security. But a lot of these people are operating from such fear, because when they get the car, when they get the new title, when they get the bigger house, when they get more money, when they take over the new company, when they take over the new country, they feel powerful for a short period of time, and then it likes, it's like a heroin addict looking for the next fix, because it's nothing on the outside can ever make you feel full on the inside. And so those people, not judging, just reporting, become like hamsters on a hamster wheel,

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  trying to accumulate. And no amount of yachts, no amount of followers, no amount of money, no amount of houses, no amount of jets ever fulfills them. They're addicts. But there's a different game to play, and that's the game you're in, otherwise you wouldn't be here with me right now. And here's the point I want to leave you with. Work on your inner life, because inner leadership is the foundation of outer leadership. And just remember, please, for you to experience outer empires, it begins by developing yourself, because your outer world is a reflection of your self-relationship. And as you begin to love yourself, as you begin to develop self-faith, as you begin

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  to embrace your inner genius and your gifts and the talents, as you begin to detect your true values that you want to live by, as you begin to say, "Here's my stand," as you begin to own your true power versus the fake power of money and position and material things. True power, you don't even have to have a title to have true power. You can be sweeping streets, and love yourself, and know your talents, and stand for doing a great job, and care about other human beings, and know that you're important, regardless of who you are in the world. That's true power. And as you begin to embrace that, well, then you become powerful in the world, and you

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  stand as a force for good on this tiny planet of ours. And that's my greatest wish for you.

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma. I hope you've received strong value from today's episode. I encourage you to read my latest book, The Everyday Hero Manifesto, which is helping people from right across the world live soaring lives. If you'd like to go into further learning, you can head over to robinsharma.com, or you can download my free ebook, The World Changers Manifesto. And when you do that, you'll also get full access to the Everyday Hero Training Formula, which is a complete system to help you upgrade your productivity, positivity, impact, and the quality of your life. Have an outstanding day.