Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast.In this episode, you will be listening to Are You Committed?with Les Brown.Get access to the Resilient Mind journal by clicking the link in the show notes.Enjoy!
See, whatever you're doing, however you spend your time, that tells you who you are.So think about what it is you like to create in your life experience.
Once I look at how you commit your time, once I do an evaluation on how you spend your time, I can tell you exactly what you're committed to.
People that say they have dreams or want to open a business or want to do something differently than what they're now doing, they don't like their jobs, they're unhappy, they're unfulfilled.
People who say they want to improve their income level, look at how they spend their time.How they spend their time, the commitment of their time, how they use that, that will really tell the truth.
People who said, I'd like to do better, but you don't find them in vocational or technical schools upgrading their skills and their knowledge, how they spend their time, that will tell you what's going on.
People who say they want to normalize their weight, they want to be healthy, but every time you see them, they're eating. That will tell you that they're committed to being obese for the rest of their lives.
People tell you they want to stop smoking and they're lighting up at that time.Folks that say, I want to stop drinking, and every time you're in their face, they're reeking with alcohol, that will tell you what's going on.
Don't have to listen to what they say.Just watch what they do.Commitment shows up in your life in what you do.On the other hand, you can make the commitment to your life that you don't like the results that you have.
and that you're going to do something about it.See, that power is available to all of us.People who look at life and decide, I want something different for myself.Carol Hatfield.
Carol lives in Detroit, single mother, decided that she wanted to go into her own business.Did not have enough money to do it.She wanted to have a health food store.She sold her car.
and used the money to start in a little storefront, a little hole in the wall.She rode to work on a bicycle.And then when she got enough money, she bought a motor scooter and did that for a long time.She's now a very successful person.
She now has three Hellcoot stores.She said it was harder to struggle, Les.She said, but I did it.She said, I made the commitment to do it, and I did it. Why is it that people are frightened by commitment?
Because when you say the word commitment, that intimidates a lot of people.Why?Because it means you have to deliver.See, most people, you ask them, hey, look here, I'd like you to do this.And they'll say, I'll try.
I'll try means that is my escape course when I don't come through.It's really a polite no.I don't have the courage to tell you no, so I'll tell you I'll try.Hey, look, I need you to come to this meeting.I'll try.So what do you mean?
You're going to lean toward the meeting? Try and sit down.You either do or you don't.Try and take this pencil out of my hand.You either do or you don't.There's no such thing as try.So most people like to use that language.
They don't want to commit themselves because commitment means, among many things, no excuse is acceptable. That's what it means.No excuse that if you decided that you want to do this, if it becomes hard, then do it hard.If it's difficult, so what?
If it's inconvenient, so what?See, a lot of people made a commitment to come here tonight, but they looked outside and said, it's raining.The temperature dropped.It's cold outside.And they decide to give up on their commitment.
And that's how people do it by their dreams. They don't honor their commitments to themselves.Let me tell you what happens when you don't keep your commitment.Number one, it begins to deplete your self-esteem and it erodes your self-image.
It weakens your faith in yourself.You don't feel good when you don't keep your commitments. The other thing is that you begin to develop weak relationships with people.People begin to realize they can't depend upon you.
They can't rely on you because you won't keep your word.You establish that kind of reputation.Just think, what would your life be like if you decided to keep your commitments?
What would all of our lives be like if we decided to keep our commitments, that we decided to do the things that we said that we were going to do? But we wouldn't even speak it unless we were going to do it.
If we decided just for a week, just see what your life can be like.Just let's do it for a commitment to make it a seven-day commitment that I won't say I will do anything unless I'm going to do it.And find out what your life will be like.
Let me tell you what, if you follow it through, if you keep your commitment to the commitment, at the end of the seven days, you'll feel strong and powerful. Because by honoring your commitment, each time that you do, that empowers you.
Whatever discipline that is required, whatever it is that you must do. So I'm suggesting, number one, commit yourself to live in the present.I saw the movie The Dead Poor Society, Robin Williams, and it had a line that says, seize the moment.
Many of us are not able to move forward and develop and manifest our greatness because we spend so much time looking back or worrying about the future. Seize the moment.
See, you cannot go into the future and manifest your greatness when you have various things in your life that's blocking you.Let's look at how we can begin to keep our commitments.Remembering what Dr. Robert Anthony said about results.
When you keep your commitments, you're able to produce some different kinds of results in your life.So how can we keep our commitments?And do we keep all commitments?No, we don't.You will not be at 100%.
However, you will have a greater percentage rate of maintaining your commitments to yourself, whatever those things might be.
If it's going into business, if it's changing a habit that you know that works against you, if it's overcoming self-destructive behavior, if it's retraining your thinking, if it's reinventing yourself, if it's trying to begin to design your relationship differently, all of us have a possibility by focusing and really harnessing our attention and concentrating on it, we really have available to us the power to honor our commitments in those particular areas.
So number one, Make it priority.See, no one would go get on an airplane if you thought your chances of getting there to your destination were as good as your luggage.Am I correct?
See, and I say the reason that you will reach your destination more times than your luggage will is because the airline, and I'm glad that they do,
has made it a priority to move the human beings from one point to the other safely, not send you off to Boston or someplace with your luggage.So I'm not really upset when my luggage doesn't show up.I'm glad they delivered me.
because they've made me a priority.See, they have made delivering you to your destination important.So if you want to honor your commitment, whatever you decide that you're going to do, make sure you make it important.Make sure it is priority.
The other thing is, whatever that you want to do, whatever you want to begin to create and beginning to manifest your greatness and strengthening your level of commitment, and it's really exercising your will, find something that you want to do on your goal, one action step, but make sure it stretches you, that it challenges you, but it's doable, that you can do it.
This year, I decided that I was going to exercise. So I started out doing just 10 setups and 10 push-ups.I know I can do that and not get upset about it.I can do that without thinking.So I started out small.
Now I'm up to 50, but if I tried to do 50 starting out, I wouldn't still be doing it. So I started doing it in manageable segments.Do that.And that strengthens your will.
So my commitment now is strengthened and fortified by the activity of actually doing it.So now I can expand and build from there.
When I decided to begin to manage my money differently, and I started saving 5% of my money, then I increased it to 10%, then to 15%.So now I have disciplined myself. to live off 75% of my income.
I took discipline to do that, but I started watching how I was spending my money.I started keeping along and following myself.So you want to begin to find something that is manageable, that you know that you can do.
The next thing in beginning to keep your commitments to yourself, have some friends that will hold you accountable.
that won't let you off the hook, that won't tolerate anything less than the best from you, people that will support you in this new way of being, in this new state of consciousness. The other thing is important is have a contingency plan.
See, many times when you make a commitment to do something, there are some other variables that will happen that you can't control or you perhaps did not think about.So you want to have some other plans going on.You want to become creative.
See, most people don't keep their commitments because when something goes wrong, they just stop.They don't have a contingency plan. So they don't know what to do next.Start being creative.
If you challenge yourself, many times we say, I don't know what to do.And I always ask myself, but if you did know what to do, Les, what will it be?That activates another part of my mind.
I start thinking about the possibilities and just experimenting.But many, many of us just stop dead in our tracks.I don't know what to do.You do know what to do.You've got genius in you.Challenge yourself.Push yourself.
Make yourself come up with something.Use your imagination. And what you will find is that you know more than you realize that you know, that you're more creative and more resourceful than you realize that you are.
And as you do that, the more you do it, the easier it will become.At first, it's going to be a struggle.And after you get into a certain level of consciousness, you will ask yourself, how is it that I didn't see this before?
At the level that I'm managing my business now, they say consciousness is what we are.I literally look at myself and say, how is it that I didn't do this before?Why is it that I couldn't see this before?
And the reason that I didn't see it before, because I didn't challenge myself.I didn't put myself out here.
See, the reason that most of us go through life never discovering our true greatness, literally walking, breathing corpses, the uncommitted life isn't worth living. Why?Because it doesn't produce anything.
So you only make things happen, your life only counts, you only make a difference when you are committed.When you make a commitment with your life.That's the people that make a commitment with their lives.
The people that make a commitment to their customers.The people that make a commitment to their families.Their relationships are the people that make the greatest impact in life. 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 1 o'clock at night, knocking on people's doors, people closing.What do you want?Would you like to buy a nice working month's television set and 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 doubt?No.Get away from our door.
Thank you very kindly.Do you know anybody else would be?Yeah, my cousin.He lives two doors down.Thank you very kindly.I tell him you sent me.
When I hear your cousin told me that you wanted to buy a television set, told me to come here and talk to you.We've 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 the 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, And the next decade, he spoke it.That was a commitment and people shared that vision.People bought into that.
We've had all kinds of examples in history where people have made declarations who have committed their lives to bring about a difference.There are people taking a stand today against hunger, I guarantee you.
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.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-circuit it with anger.We short-circuit 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 prevent it, but you can't destroy it.I was reading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frick.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've 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.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, months, 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?
A 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 says, 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're 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.Commitment.
It means taking a stand, taking a stand for you.It means delivering.It means coming through.What if you don't keep your commitment, Les?What if you give it everything you have and you come up short?
Or if you don't give it everything you have, what if you get weak along the way and you throw in a towel on yourself, you surrender? to your emotions.What then?A lot of people become discouraged.They become frustrated.And they say, oh, what the heck?
And they go back to doing what they were doing before saying it doesn't work.Here's what I suggest.Number one, that does happen.So take total responsibility for it.Just own it.Don't make any excuses on why you gave in or why you didn't come through.
Just own it.And face the flack, whatever it is. Stand up inside yourself.Next thing is, assess the situation.How did you get here?What happened that you broke down, that you had a breakdown, and you surrendered?What happened?What was going on?
When I used to go on a diet, and I no longer do that.I've made a commitment to a healthy lifestyle.I used to eat up until 12 midnight on Sunday.Anything that wasn't moving.
And on Monday, I would get up and eat a light fruit breakfast, and for lunchtime, I would pick some boiled chicken and meticulously peel the skin off and eat the chicken, and then eat the skin.
Do five setups, look in the mirror, and become discouraged because my stomach doesn't look like a washboard or one of the Avon Healy dances.And I say, what the use?
And then I go to the refrigerator and eat food cold, standing right there in the refrigerator.So when I evaluated where I broke down, I realized I can't have junk food in the house.So I had to remove that.
And then I realized there are certain streets I couldn't drive down.So I changed my route. I stopped taking people to lunch or to dinner because I couldn't sit there and watch them eat.
When I had to go someplace and speak and they were eating, I said, call me downstairs when it's time for me to speak because if I sit at the table looking at them, the food's going to call my name.And I know this.
So I had to begin to make sure that I wasn't putting myself in a position where I would give up on my commitment.Am I making sense to you?So I began to strategize around avoiding situations where I knew that I was going to become weak.
Another thing I do when I don't keep my commitment, I either deny myself something or I do a trade-off.If a glazed donut takes advantage of me,
Then I require myself to do an extra 25 setups, or I walk for an extra 15 or 20 minutes because I've got a hammer lock on my head and say, come on over here.So you might have to deny yourself something or do a trade-off.
Do something that will offset it.The other thing is, start again.So what?You fell flat on your face.So what?Start again. Learn from experience and start again.Don't count yourself out.
Don't sentence yourself to a lifetime of being miserable, a lifetime of being broke, a lifetime of being unhealthy, a lifetime of being in a relationship that is no longer fulfilling to you, a lifetime of working on a job that does not bring you satisfaction, that's not giving you the creative urge that you need and that you've got to have in your life that stimulates you.
Don't sentence yourself like that.You are a human being.Don't volunteer your life that way. Your life has too much value to the universe.You've got something to contribute.You've got something to give.
And so what if you make a commitment and you're not able to do it like a pro? that you're not good as everybody else.Live in the moment.I like what this says, look to this day for it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the realities and verities of existence, the bliss of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power.For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision.
For today, today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.Look well, therefore, to this day.
See, if we just start enjoying where we are, if we make that kind of commitment to enjoy where we are, to experience the experience of life where we are, to do all we can right now where we are.Forget about the mistakes yesterday.
Forget about all your failures yesterday.Forget about what you don't have.That's not important.Only thing that we have is right now. Right now, right now.And I say that life is calling on you to call forth on that.
The optimists, which I think one of the most positive groups in the world, they have something called the optimist creed, and I like, and it says promise yourself.
I change it to commit yourself, because I think that commitment has more power than promise.It says commit yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear cheerful consonants at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.Commit yourself to these things.Isn't that powerful?What a commitment to making with your life.Commit yourself to stretch.
To get outside of your comfort zone and not be concerned about what people think about you. because they're thinking it anyhow.Don't worry about what they will say.They're already saying it.So what do you care?
Decide that your life has so much meaning to the planet. Decide that you have something to give.That's why you're here.So you didn't just show up.You brought something here.You're a journey.
You have a destination, mission to achieve, to do, to implement, to perform, to experience. Decide to commit yourself to be an adventurer in life.Look out on life around you.
Look within yourself and say, where is it in my life that I need to make a commitment right now? Where is it?That it might be for your health.It might be to be a happier person.It might be to make a difference in your community.It might be that.
Where is it?I say that commitment shows up.And the man or woman who has some idea, some dream that they've been nurturing within themselves, and no one believed it.No one saw it for them.
They weren't masters at it, they weren't experts at it, no one would build a statue and ever call their name and recognize them.
It never made it to the front page of the newspaper, but they had something that was theirs, something that was their baby, something that they loved and they believed in, and they just did what they could with what God gave them with their dream.
Commitment shows up, and people that are willing to give themselves a chance. who look at their lives, look within themselves, and say, I know, I know that this just cannot be it for my life.I know that there's something I'm supposed to do.
I don't know right now.Or maybe you do know.Maybe you do know, and you talk yourself out of it.And I understand that. Because I'm late.No, no, no.Everything happens as it should.I got the courage to step out, to become committed.
I was seriously not serious before.And I decided it took me some time to build up the courage to become committed, because it frightened me.So I understand wrestling with it.I wish I could tell you I've been doing this for 20 years.I haven't.
I haven't.I haven't. I'm just glad that I decided to become committed before I left here.And wherever you are, decide that you're going to commit your lives now.And let it show up in your contribution.Let it show up in what you have to share.
And whatever commitment that you make, honor your commitment as yourself.Honor your word as yourself.Whatever you put out there. Good what you've got.I want to thank you very much for your consciousness.
This is Mrs. Mamie Brown's baby boy, Leslie Calvin Brown, saying it's been a plumb, pleasing pleasure, as well as a privilege.Thank you all.
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