Principles for Success: “Embrace Reality and Deal With It” | Episode 2

- [Announcer] Principles for Success.

An ultra mini-series adventure in 30 minutes

and in eight episodes.

Episode Two, Embrace Reality and Deal With It.

- The path you take in life is your most important decision.

In my case, I wanted my life to be great

and I feared boredom and mediocrity

more than I feared failure.

Since I didn't start out with money,

and I didn't need much more than a bed to sleep in

and food to eat, I could skew my decisions

to pursue my adventures.

So ever since I was a kid, I ran after the things

I wanted, crashed, got up and ran again,

and crashed again.

And each time I crashed I learned something, got better,

and crashed less.

By doing that over and over again,

I learned to love this process,

even the crashing part of it.

Through it, I encountered reality,

and I learned how to deal with it,

which inspired another one of my most fundamental principles

which is that truth is the essential foundation

for producing good outcomes.

By truth, I don't mean anything more than

the way the world works.

I believe that we were given the laws of reality by nature.

Humans didn't create them, but we can use them

to foster our own evolution and achieve our goals.

Realizing that made me a hyperrealist,

by which I mean I became someone who has discovered

the great rewards of deeply understanding, accepting,

and working with reality as it is

and not as I wish it would be.

When I say I'm a hyperrealist, people sometimes think

I'm saying that dreams can't come true.

That's absolutely not true.

Without pursuing dreams, life is mundane.

What I mean is that to me, hyperrealism is the best way

to choose one's dreams and then achieve them.

Having big dreams plus embracing reality plus having

lots of determination will bring you a successful life.

I believe this formula is true for everyone,

but what does a successful life look like?

We each have to decide for ourselves what success is.

I don't care whether you want to be a master of the universe

or to live under a palm tree or anything else.

I really don't.

Each of us chooses goals based on our values and decides

on the best path to achieve them, but we all need approaches

to making decisions that work well, especially when facing

problems, mistakes, and weaknesses that stand in our way.

To succeed, we must embrace all our realities,

especially the harsh realities that we wish weren't true.

At first, looking at these harsh realities caused me

a lot of pain, but I learned that this pain was just

psychological and that by seeing things differently made

all the difference.

I came to view problems like puzzles that would reward me

if I could solve them.

They would help me deal with the problem at hand,

and they would give me principles for dealing

with similar problems in the future.

I learned to treat pain as a cue that a great learning

opportunity is at hand, which led me to realize

that pain plus reflection equals progress.

Meditation has been invaluable

in helping me see things that way.

I found that when I calmed myself down

and embraced my realities and dealt with them,

the rewards brought me pleasure and the pain faded.

Each of us has the unique capability to think logically

to reflect on ourselves and our circumstances

and to direct our own personal evolution.

Doing this well is just a matter of following

a simple five-step process.

In episode three, we'll explore what that process is

and how to use it.

(words whooshing)