1008. Why Do We Make Things So Much Harder On Ourselves?

Why do you make things so much harder on yourself? We do. We make things super, super difficult. I can tell you why. It's because that you've been led to believe that knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power. Organized knowledge is power, and that's two totally different things. So look at it like this. You can put the smartest people on your, on your social media feeds, Those people that you just love, you adore, you're like, "Bro, I'd give anything to exchange lives with them," you can like all their posts That's surface level knowledge. But when you begin to build a knowledge library where you develop folders and subfolders that are classified and categorized, labeled, where you really study that material, well, that's where it goes from surface level knowledge to gaining a deeper understanding of knowledge. Napoleon Hill said there are two methods of gathering knowledge. The first method is other people's knowledge. I like to call it OPK, other people's knowledge. That kind of knowledge is where those people already went ahead of you. They've lived the life that you wanna live. They have made the mistakes. They took themselves from nothing, sometimes in worse situations than you ever were, and built and shaped their lives and developed a mindset In a way that you admire they l- laid the tracks for you. They organized it and left it behind for you to have access to. It's in the form of podcasts, it's in the forms of video, it's in the form of books. They've left all that. They've done so much of the work But here's where we go wrong It's the second method of gathering knowledge, and that's personal experience. So it's kinda like this. Personal experience would be like buying a, buying a piece of furniture and it comes flat in a box. And instead of reading the instructions, you instead wanna look at the front of the box, the finished product, and try to put it together that way instead of reading the instructions. And if you all men have done this, and we, you know, we think we know what we're doing, and we don't. And then finally, stuff is backwards, stuff ain't fitting, there's leftover parts, and we're like, "Wait a minute." And we finally slow down enough Open up the instructions and put it together the right way That's what you do in your own life. We try to look at the box covers of people that we admire. And we try to assemble our life based on that instead of reading the instructions. They wrote all the material out for you. They laid it all out in commencement speeches, in long-form interviews, in podcasts, in books. They laid all that out for you. Yet instead, you choose to look at the box cover, run with it, and try to figure it out on your own. It's the craziest thing in the world, but that's why we make things so much harder on ourselves. It's almost as if there's a pinata hanging from the sky somewhere in Texas. You know how big Texas is? Actually, let's find out How big is the state of Texas? 268,597 square miles. So somewhere within that 268,597 square miles, there's a pinata hanging from the sky in Texas And I say, "Look, in that piñata is success. I'm gonna blindfold you with a stick, and you start any place in Texas, and you go try to find it with a blindfold on, and you wildly swing away." You're never gonna find it, and that's what we do in our lives. Why try to figure things out on your own through personal experience when you have access to people who have already gone ahead of you, who have made the grand mistakes, who have blown things up and put it back together, who had near-death experiences, both personally and financially, who did all these things? And they're saying, "Don't make these mistakes Why would you not do that? So instead of trying to muscle things out and figure it out on your own, "I don't have anybody to help me out," yes you do. That's a damn lie. But instead of living off this narrative that it's, you know, me against the world. You have to slow down and begin to study those people who went before you, OPK, and leverage other people's experience, and organize it in such a way where you're not scattered, you know where it's at And then you, this is the slowdown part, then you develop a deep understanding Not where you can just recite it and sound smart, but where you can actually work smart and you become a student of the subject matter, whatever it is, your faith, your family, your fitness, your finances, your fulfillment, whatever it is. Why reinvent anything? It's already there. Just improve on it and assimilate it in such a way where it makes sense for you. What brought them success may not be the same track, but it's got a lot of the same ingredients. And so when you begin to slow down and you become a student of that And learn it deeply. You have a deep understanding of it Then you can actually work smarter. Instead of blindly swinging at the piñata somewhere in the state of Texas, it's like you have a GPS. You know exactly where that piñata is and because you organized the knowledge in such a way, you studied the people who went before you, it's so ingrained in your soul that you live and breathe it. It's an obsession. You, you, you understand it You won't even need to take the blindfold off because you know it's already there That's the fast track to success. Fast track does not mean in a matter of days. It's just a matter of time, and the time is all different for everybody. It's the fact that you do your part, and instead of running out there doing it on your own, winging it, you become a student of the game Let's get out of here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace