Robin Sharma – Follow Your Fire

The whole purpose of life is to grow.  Robin Sharma walks us through five of the primary reasons good people fail.

Transcript:

Every great hero was broken. Martin Luther King Jr. said it so well. He said, “Until you have found something you’re willing to die for, you’re not fit to live.” If you ever look at Nelson Mandela, he suffered more than most people. If you look at any great artist, they all out suffered the majority. So, what I want to do is walk you through five of the primary reasons good people, who could really own their crafts and lift the world, don’t do it.

The first thing is fears are larger than their faith. Good people often become seduced by the chatter of their loudest fears. We are good in our comfort zones, but the moment we start to go blue ocean around our next level, our fears come up and the true heroes and the true titans and the true masters, those people are not fearless, those are people who have just practiced walking into their fear to the point where they’re comfortable amid their discomfort.

The second reason good people fail is this, they blame their outer conditions versus seeing it as an opportunity to grow themselves. You see what most people do, they stumble and they fall and they become heartbroken or disappointed by life’s challenges that happens to every single one of us. If you simply start asking yourself, how can I turn my stumbling blocks into stepping stones, how can I turn my hard times into monuments of strength of character? The whole purpose of life is to grow, to evolve, be great in your own original way.

Third reason good people lose or fail is they become distracted versus being disrupters. Most leaders and producers and performers and creatives on the planet today are addicted to distraction, which is destroying their masterful production. You can go to the top five percent by simply stripping out the distraction. You’ve got to be willing and brave enough to spend a lot of time alone to do work that wows the world and disrupts your field.

Number four, the fourth reason good people lose is simply this, they have low confidence. If you look at the great business builders, if you look at an Elon Musk, if you look at a Jeff Bezos, if you look at a Phil Knight, all of these great masters have one thing in common, acutely high levels of personal confidence. They came up with an idea for the incandescent light bulb, they came up with an idea for Amazon, they come up with an idea for Tesla, they came up with an idea for SpaceX, and everyone laughed at them, but it’s because of the confidence they had built, they kept ongoing.

The fifth and final reason that good people lose is simply this, they didn’t stay in the game long enough. Few things are as powerful for you to win, in your own unique way, is staying in the game, staying with your purpose, staying with your goal, longer than the world thinks it’s sane for you to keep on pursuing your dream, your obsession. I don’t know what that fire within your heart is, but I am here to tell you that fire is a message. That fire is your instinct. That fire is your cellular DNA telling you, you have an opportunity or responsibility to get it done, and this is where heroes are made.