Eric Bailey | How to Un-Stub Your Toe on the Nail of Life

Eric Bailey - Rise Above

In this new incredible Goalcast speech, Eric Bailey delivers a passionate plea to all those sitting on nails, struggling in life, and complacent with their circumstances. It is time to get off that nail.

Transcript:

Most people in life don't fail because they aim too high and miss. Most people who fail in life, they aim too low and they hit.

My father told me a story once. There was a little boy who went walking with his father, and as he was walking with his father in the neighborhood, they walked past a home and sitting on the porch or the veranda, as you would call it, was an older man that had his dog by his feet. Trusted dog. The dog was just so complacent with life and knew that everything was going to be prepared and taken care of for him. But the dog was sitting there by his owner's feet and he was moaning and groaning like he was just in so much pain.

And then the little boy said to the owner of the dog, he said, "Sir, what's wrong with your dog?" And the owner looked at the boy, and the owner said to him, "Oh, it's okay. He's just sitting on a nail." Dad, why is he letting the dog just sit on the nail? And the owner of the dog said, "Oh, that's easy. It's not hurting enough for him to get off." It's not hurting enough for him to get off.

There are so many people who sit in pain and complain and blame and hold onto the past that they don't just say, "You know what? Enough is enough. I'm getting up. I'm pulling all the nails out and I'm going to go forward." Who in this room is sitting on some sort of nail. Could be a health nail. Hands up. Could be a financial nail. Could be a relationship nail. Could be a friendship nail. Could be a career nail. It could be a nail that's clogging your vision, like you just don't know where you're going in life.

There are all kind of nails that we're on. But guess what? Today my role is to get you to see that you don't have to stay on the nail for the rest of your life. Getting off the nail means understanding that all of us, we are linked. We came onto this planet. We came into this world to do something amazing. We came to do something great. However, sometimes circumstances come into our lives that sometime test us, that challenge us. Sometimes we come into situations where we have something happen to us, and we go oh, no. I can't go any forward. Oh, no. It can't happen. And then we blame. We blame the color of our skin. We blame our race. We blame our religion. We blame our age. We blame the fact that some of us have hair and some of us don't have hair.

Here's what I want to say is that there have been so many successful people, successful people who have been on nails. They've been just nailed down for years and years and years and years. But what happened to them? Why were they able to make that transition from being on a nail to becoming successful? What did they do? What do they share? We all have it. The question is, are you really ready to use it?