Hi, I'm AJ Hoog, the author of Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native at effortlessenglishclub .com.
You have failed. Maybe many times you have failed.
Maybe with English you have failed.
Failed to speak fluently, powerfully, effortlessly, confidently, like a native.
Other things in your life.
Maybe failed relationships.
Boyfriend, girlfriend, even marriages ended.
Failed relationships.
Failures in sports, failures in school.
What to do about it?
I have failures in my life.
Many. I'm 56, so a lot of failures.
Maybe the most frustrating kind of failure is when you fail to do what you know you should do.
What you know you must do but then you don't do it.
Something like English.
You know you should listen to English.
One hour or two hours every day, or more.
I say just two hours if you can, every single day.
If you use my lessons, my Power English course, or my VIP program, we're both together.
Again you know you should listen to each of the audios in the unit for about two hours a day.
You know you should repeat the audios.
You know you should read the text.
You know it would be also good to do extra reading.
Read some fairly easy books in English.
You know it would be good that you should watch some YouTube videos.
Listen to podcasts like you're doing now, which is good in English.
But then you don't do it.
You know that when you do these things every day, every day, not just one time, but every day, you know you will improve.
You will succeed. Maybe in four months, maybe in six months, maybe it's a year.
Maybe it's even two years of doing this.
But you will achieve fluency and mastery, confident, effortless speaking when you do this.
Absolutely you will.
And yet, maybe you don't do it.
Maybe in the past you haven't done it even when you know you should.
Or maybe you're doing fine with English, but there are other areas in your life like health.
You know what you should eat.
You know the kinds of healthy foods you should eat.
But then you don't eat them.
Or you know you should avoid too much sugar, but then you get a little tired, you get a little stressed, and you eat a bunch of sugar.
Or maybe it's exercise is the problem.
You know you should exercise regularly, but then you feel tired and lazy and you don't do it.
We all have some area in our life where this happens.
This is, I think, the most, for me it's the most frustrating kind of failure, because if a failure happens by accident, okay, it's easier to deal with, I think.
But when it's a failure of ourselves, we try to rely on ourselves.
It's called self -reliance.
It means you know like we're independent.
We do everything we must do, the kind of things Tony Robbins talks about.
Personal power. But then we find there are limits.
We fail to do what we should do.
What's even more scary is that there's so many things in the world that can cause pain, suffering, and failure that we cannot control.
And I think we can see right now, and not just now, it's been going on for a while, but the direction of the world right now is negative, right?
The world is moving towards war, a larger and larger world war.
The Western, you'd call it the American, empire is declining, going down.
And as it does, it's lashing out, striking out.
And we can already see this in a couple places in the world, and most likely that's going to grow and get worse.
We can see very negative economic trends, direction happening in most of the world.
Right now, for example, in many parts of the world, certainly in the United States.
I know in Japan also, I would guess in Europe, I don't know for sure, but and probably many other places, we see inflation, prices going higher and higher and higher.
Basic things, food, gasoline, you know, power, energy for your house, the things that we all need.
And the price is going up, up, up, up, up very fast.
I've been shocked at how expensive everything is in America now, and just the few years since I visited last time, the prices have gone up so much.
And we know the news lies to us.
They say, Oh, you know, official inflation is not that high.
But then, you know, they cheat and they use a lot of little tricks to make that inflation number in the news look low.
But you just need to go to the grocery store or go shopping for anything, and you can see that the prices are so much higher.
Like, for example, in America, cars, used cars are so expensive now.
The inflation is unbelievable.
It's probably going to get worse.
And, of course, something like war.
Who knows how that affects us?
Of course, war has a terrible effect on the country or countries where the fighting is happening.
People have to leave their homes and flee.
Or, you know, of course, there's the potential for injury or death or starving.
All kinds of horrible things.
But even if you don't live in the country where the fighting's happening, that war, that fighting can have an effect still, even on your own country, economically, for example, refugees causing chaos, crime, all kinds of terrible things that happen because of the war.
Okay. So we're seeing here, then, and what I've been realizing in my own life, quite a lot, is there are limits to self -reliance.
I've always talked about, in a lot of my lessons, I talk about self -reliance, right?
Taking action. Doing everything you can to succeed.
With something simple like English, and that simple thing, English could help you a lot with jobs, careers, opportunities, international opportunities.
It's a very very powerful skill to have that global international language of business and science and etc.
And other skills that you can learn and study, and there are many things we can do, and we should do.
Should do whatever we can for ourselves.
But there's a limit.
There are quite strong limits to self -reliance.
And in fact, total self -reliance, total independence, total personal power, individual power, your own power, my power, is very very limited.
We can't totally control our own mind and our own emotions.
I can't. You can't.
I mean, how many times, let's say you have a bad temper, you get angry easily.
And you know it, and you don't like it.
And you tell yourself, I'm not going to get angry.
Oh, I've got to calm down, and you can try meditation, and you try everything you can think of, but then something happens.
And in that moment, what happens?
You get angry. You lose your temper again.
Even though in your mind, in your thoughts, in your intention, you make a very strong decision not to do it, but still, you can lose control of your own mind and your own emotions.
We've all had this happen, right?
And maybe it's not anger.
Maybe it's some kind of physical craving, something you desire, some kind of food.
We can do this with relationships.
You may have a relationship where you're strongly attracted, or you think you're massively in love with someone.
But then you realize it's wrong.
They're not good for you.
Maybe they're not a good person.
Maybe there's just something about them or the relationship that's wrong.
And you tell yourself, nope, you can't do it.
It's over. You've got to just walk away.
But then you don't do it.
You can't. Your attraction, your...
I don't know if we could really call it true love, but your strong feelings of attraction, or lust, or neediness, or whatever.
Maybe even love. Passion will take control.
You lose control of yourself.
You don't do what you know you should do.
You do what you decide to do.
You lose control of your own emotions and mind.
And we can get better control.
We can use lots of techniques of, you know, NLP, neuro -linguistic programming, psychological techniques, meditation techniques.
Lots of the things I teach in my Power English course that I teach you in my VIP program.
These can help, and they do help quite a lot when you practice them.
But there's still a limit.
There's still a limit.
There's still a point where you can still lose control.
There's a limit to self -reliance.
Because why? Because we are limited.
We are individual as a human being.
You are limited. You do not have unlimited power.
I know that's a nice book title.
But it's not the truth.
We're not unlimited.
You're not God. I'm not God.
We're not unlimited.
We are very limited.
And it becomes super obvious when we can't even control our own feelings and mind completely.
So of course we have no control, zero control, over politics, war, you know, the economy in our own country, the world economy, just accidents that can happen of all different kinds, natural disasters, all of these things.
Obviously we have zero, zero, zero control.
They can change. Bad things can happen in all these different areas.
And there's nothing we can do about it.
All right. So before I go to this next story, so a quick promotion for Effortless English, go to effortlessenglishclub .com.
That's my only official website.
Be careful. There's pirates out there.
And now I'm hearing that, you know, the pirates are stealing people's credit card numbers.
And then they sell them, and then they you get charged all kinds of other stuff.
So use the official website, only effortlessenglishclub .com.
Join my Power English course.
Add on the VIP program as well.
You will speak powerfully, influently.
And this can help you tremendously with jobs, careers, and other opportunities, international opportunities.
And it's a very smart thing to do, to have those opportunities, to have that skill, because you never know what's going to happen.
A quick true story about my mother.
Give me an example of shock and change, and things happening that you can't control.
My mom, when I was in at university, in fact, and my younger sister, so I just have one sister, there's only two of us.
She was in her last year of high school.
So she's about to graduate and go to university also, leave home.
So this was a tough time for my mom, because you know, having her children grow up and leave the house, you know, I think she's a little lonely.
And it was tough when I left.
She told me that it was very hard for her when I went off to college, when I went off to university.
So and, you know, obviously, she was middle aged at that point.
And it's already a bit of a difficult time for her.
But also a good time.
It was expected. Of course, you know, it's coming as a parent.
It's hard to have your kids grow up because you're just going to miss them.
And, you know, I miss them being with you all day, every day.
But also, of course, you, this is what you want.
You want them to grow up and be, you know, healthy and happy adults.
And you want them to to have good lives and make a good life for themselves.
Well, right at this time, my mom got a horrible shock.
And that is that my dad suddenly wanted a divorce.
And my mom did not expect, she had no idea this was coming.
No idea that this was going to happen.
So it just was like, from nowhere, she, you know, she was imagining that, okay, my kids are growing up, but then, okay, she'll be with her husband.
And, you know, they she had all these dreams of, you know, how they would retire, I don't know, maybe travel or spend time together.
I don't know, but she didn't think she would be alone.
She would have him.
And, you know, as most people, I think, who are married do dream of these kind of things.
And suddenly, boom, ended.
So, of course, her first reaction was she did not want this.
And so she wanted to stop it.
She wanted to stop him from leaving.
And try to work it out.
And, you know, do whatever, you know, counseling anything.
Let's just try, try, try.
But no, he had no interest in any of that.
She was powerless. There was no amount of personal power or psychological tricks or anything that could change this or could stop it from happening.
Because we don't control other people, especially adults.
She could not stop him from leaving.
As I said, she was middle age.
She had stayed home as a mom with her kids, right, myself and my sister.
So she had basically no work history.
I think she had a couple part -time jobs, a few, but for very short periods of time, a couple times.
But really, no job history.
And therefore, really, no job skills.
So she's middle -aged.
Her kids are growing up and one has already left.
And the other one's about to go off to school.
And now, her husband's leaving her.
She has no job history, no job skills.
So she was facing, in her mind, horrible loneliness.
Everybody leaving her at that time in her life.
Also, incredible fear.
She would have no income, no home, and no family.
Everything taken away.
She felt completely hopeless, deeply depressed.
Everything gone. And powerless to stop it.
So these things can happen to us in life.
They can. There's a limit to our personal power.
No matter how, I don't care.
You're super Tony Robbins, you know, the motivational speaker.
There's a limit. But at the very least, old age will eventually limit us physically.
And of course, there's always death.
And none of us can beat it.
Not for ourselves, not for others.
This is a very difficult truth to face.
It was extremely difficult for my mother to face all of this.
And this truth of her powerlessness.
I'll tell you right now, my own life, it's very, very difficult to face this.
Because I also am powerless right now.
Facing very frightening, scary things with my child, who I've mentioned will be going into heart surgery next month.
Open heart surgery.
It's terrifying. And while I will, of course, do everything I can to help and prepare and, but I'm not a surgeon.
I'm not a doctor. If we could avoid it, I would avoid it.
Believe me, I would avoid it.
But it's surgery or death.
But the surgery is a major, scary surgery.
And I'm powerless. There's nothing I can do.
I'm not a surgeon. I'm not a doctor.
I can't go in there and do anything.
And at times, I'm terrified for my child.
And there's no amount of Tony Robbins.
Whoa. None of that is enough in this situation.
What's the answer? Is it hopeless?
Are we ultimately going to fail at everything?
Are we ultimately, finally, without hope, no hope at all?
And no, the answer is faith.
Faith, faith. Now some people have, I don't know, strange reactions to this word because of the media or because of maybe some personal experiences with, I don't know, certain religious people in their past.
I used to have, I guess, a bit of a negative feeling about this word faith when I was very young, I mean, like teenager age, because of some bad encounters with some, you know, a certain kind of religious people.
Growing up, where, I don't know where the word faith was used in a, what the word is, in an almost negative way or a very irrational way.
And in a way that ultimately I realized was about serving some group, their own little group.
That's not what I'm talking about.
The first person, the first thing that changed my mind about the word faith, it made me realize the, not only the power of faith, but the necessity.
We can't function. We can't live without faith.
I don't care. Even the most extreme atheist has faith.
So, and Thoreau very rationally wrote in Walden, when you get Power English, you'll know that's one of the lessons is about Walden.
A lot of people, that's one of their favorite lessons.
It's still one of my favorite books.
So, Thoreau writes about faith and he was a very rational guy, and he believed in self -reliance and all these things to a certain level.
But he talked about how the foundation, at the bottom of or underneath self -reliance, is faith and that we all rely on faith.
Not just religious faith in God, but even just the faith to get up in the morning.
The faith that the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning.
How do you know it well?
Well, you can't really predict it, but you have faith because it's come up every day in the past, in the morning.
And you know, you've learned something about astronomy and the way the world works.
And you have faith that the scientists are not lying to you that it's the truth.
And of course, you have faith in your own past experience.
Right? So, you have faith, meaning you have certainty.
You're certain. You're sure.
Well, it's going to come up tomorrow.
But who knows, you know, a meteor comet could hit the earth and destroy us all and it wouldn't happen.
So, but we have faith.
We're pretty sure it's going to happen.
You have faith when you get on an airplane that go, you know, from your home and it's going to go to Japan.
You have faith that you're going to arrive in Japan.
You have faith that Japan exists.
How do you know Japan exists if you've never been there?
Well, you've read about it in books.
You've seen videos of it.
Maybe you've seen pictures, but you have to trust that all these things you have to have a certain faith that these things are real.
Now, that's fairly easy to do because you can get a lot of different examples, right, of all of this.
And you realize, okay, yeah, quite certain that it's true.
There is a place called Japan.
So that's kind of what you might call, you know, a very, very, very rational faith.
Almost a scientific faith.
You could call it is based on, well, it's based on two kinds of evidence and the two kinds of evidence are past experience patterns, things that have happened.
Again and again and again.
And then you have faith that they will continue to happen, such as the sun coming up.
And then you have the faith of, you might just call it eyewitness testimony, right?
It means the faith of other people's experience of other people's knowledge.
And if there are a lot of people who have or who say they have an experience, then you have faith that it's true, right?
So again, like if you use the example of Japan, you've never been to Japan, but you can read so many books and find so many videos and pictures and maybe even people you know personally who've been there so you can find, you know, hundreds, thousands and thousands of examples of people saying, Oh, I've
been to Japan. Here are pictures of Japan.
So you have quite a strong faith that Japan is real.
There's really a place called Japan and you can go there.
So that's based on, you know, the experience of other people that you trust.
Trust is another a similar word to faith.
So your personal experience and then the experience of other people that you trust.
And of course, the more other people there are, the greater or the easier it is to have that faith.
So this is Thoreau's point and then he goes on then of course to talk about faith at the higher level, the spiritual level.
And for Thoreau, this faith was also rational.
It was first of all based on his own experiences and understanding that, you know, nothing in the world could function without some kind of higher power and you can name that higher power in an impersonal way, meaning not a person, not a more of like an energy or something.
It's called Brahman, Insenato Nodama, the Chinese call it Dao.
Some, I know some people like in the West will just use the word the universe or the multiverse.
Or you can name this higher power with personally God, Krishna, Allah, Jesus Christ, not Ayana, on and on and on, many names.
But we're sustained.
Every day we couldn't exist without this, this power.
And that faith is what connects us and opens us to this power, this higher power.
I'm just gonna use the phrase higher power because, you know, everyone has their own name or way of talking about this.
And if I use one, then maybe other people they, you know, they kind of don't, that they don't connect with it.
So I'll just be very general and vague and just say higher power.
Okay, and you can substitute whatever word or name is best for you.
Krishna, Allah, God, Dao, universe, Brahman, etc.
It's interesting, in Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a group that helps alcoholics, right?
And it's an old group.
I think it started in the United States.
And what's interesting about Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the, I think one of the good, very good points about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it's all alcoholics helping each other.
There's no like psychiatrist, there's no doctor, or psychologist, or big expert, you know, that comes in and is going to fix them.
It's just alcoholics, they come together in a meeting, and they all just help each other stop drinking alcohol and break their addiction, get free from their addiction.
So in one way, you could look at this and say, self -reliance, they're not, they're not, you know, waiting for some expert from the outside to help them, they're helping themselves.
And that's fantastic.
It's great. But what's interesting is, you know, they have the they call it the 12 Steps.
And what's very interesting is that, you know, as part of these 12 Steps, it's the 12 things they have to do to become free of alcohol, to break the addiction, to stop drinking and not drink again.
But one of them is to acknowledge their powerlessness.
And I always used to criticize this in the past.
When I was young, I would think, oh, that's terrible.
Teaching people, they're powerless because I had this, still had this Tony Robbins idea that no, no, no, personal power, we can do everything ourselves.
And now I understand it.
Because Alcoholics Anonymous teaches them, they learn from other alcoholics who have successfully stopped drinking.
They learn, no, no, you are powerless against this addiction.
If you had power, you would just stop easily.
If it was just personal power, you would decide, I'm not going to drink anymore, because it's destroying my life.
And I'm a terrible person when I drink.
So you know, rationally, it's very clear.
I decide, I'm not going to drink alcohol anymore.
And then that would be the end, it would be quite simple.
But if you know the story of most alcoholics, you know, that's not what happens.
They do that, their life becomes terrible because of their drinking.
Usually they lose their job, they lose families, their health, all kinds of horrible stuff.
They finally decide, enough, I'm going to stop.
This is destroying my life.
It's terrible. I'm going to stop drinking.
And they make that decision very clear, right?
Personal power. But what happens?
At some point after one day, a week, a month, a year, something happens, they get stressed, they get tired, whatever happens, a friend comes to their house and brings some beer, whatever, something happens, and they lose control of their own mind, their own emotions, in many ways, their own body.
They lose control, and they drink again.
And as soon as they drink one drink, they just keep on drinking, drinking, drinking, and then right back to destroying their lives again.
So they are, they're powerless against this addiction.
They can't beat it.
No amount of thinking or understanding or knowledge or strong willpower and determination works.
They're powerless against it.
Just as you and I are in many areas of our lives.
You can look at your own life and you can find many areas where you've been powerless.
You've said, I've got to do this.
I must do this. I must do this.
And then you don't do it.
Or you say, I got to stop.
I must stop. I must stop.
But you don't stop.
Or you say, oh my God, it's helpless, it's hopeless.
All these horrible things are happening.
I've got to become a super powerful incredible unstoppable person, personal power, and I will beat it all.
I will not be powerless.
I will not be afraid.
But you don't do it.
Instead, you feel depressed and hopeless.
So that's why AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, teaches alcoholics to first say and understand and know.
I'm powerless. I can't beat this by myself.
I can't do it. I do not have enough personal power to beat alcohol.
If they did, they would already be free of alcohol.
They would have done it already.
They wouldn't need Alcoholics Anonymous.
They would have already stopped.
But they haven't. So clearly they're powerless against it.
So that's the bad news.
The good news is that what's one of the, I can't remember the exact order of the steps.
There's several, but one of the other very important steps is they then have faith in a higher power to help them stop.
Because it's that higher power, the faith in the higher power, which kind of opens them to that power.
That's where they get the power to stop drinking.
And that's where the successful, they call recovered Alcoholics, meaning they're not drinking anymore.
The ones who stop and they never drink again, they find that power, the strength to stop in faith.
They, you know, the phrase they use, they surrender to now, this moment, they surrender to that higher power.
They have faith that that higher power is a power of love and will help them.
And it does. And when they do that, that's when they finally are able to stop completely.
It's very surprising.
It's, it's, it's a, I think it's a beautiful spiritual law.
In fact, I think there's a beauty in it that by admitting our own powerlessness, surrendering in a way, not giving up in a hopeless way, but giving up the idea that we have to do everything by ourselves, that somehow we have to find some kind of super human power inside ourselves to succeed, to be happy,
to overcome terrible things, to break bad addictions and bad behaviors.
Instead, we give up.
I can't do it by myself.
I can't do it myself.
And you're probably not going to find another human being who can do it for you.
But somehow when you surrender and you just say, I have faith that there is a higher power, it can be based on your own experiences.
Or you can, if you don't have experiences of a higher power yourself, you can find that there are millions of other people through history who have had that experience.
And many of them have written.
Of course, there are the great prophets and gurus and saints.
And they're also just lots of regular people.
I'm reading a great book.
Actually, I'm reading every book I can find by a guy named Andrew Murray, Christian writer from the 1800s.
And, you know, I mean, I actually, from his writing, he seems to be quite a saintly person.
But you know, he's not a famous saint.
You know, it's not anyone, most people don't ever heard of this guy, a regular guy, was married, had kids.
But you'll find that from all religious backgrounds, you'll find people like this too, just with great, strong, amazing personal experiences of faith.
So you can find that evidence, the witness evidence, the evidence of many other people who've had the experience of faith and a higher power.
And eventually, you'll have it yourself.
And then you'll know.
But the great surprise of all this is that by surrendering, by giving up the need to do it all yourself, to find all the power inside yourself, you don't have enough.
But when you realize that, you suddenly find an amazing unexpected strength, discipline, and energy and indeed power that you know is not coming from you, but it's coming from somewhere.
And, you know, I like to think of it as faith is kind of like the wire, the connecting wire to that higher power.
And the deeper your faith, the more you can even just ask, please give me faith.
You know, pray to that higher power, whichever name you wish to pray to.
And ask for faith, give me stronger faith.
Grant me this faith.
I feel powerless right now.
I can't overcome all these problems, all these weaknesses I have.
I can't overcome them.
I've tried and I've tried and I've tried.
I've tried all these tricks, all these techniques, this situation, these things inside of me, I can't change them.
I can't do it. Give me faith and help me to do this.
Do this for me. You know, give me strength.
Give me discipline.
Give me energy. Give me ideas.
It will all come to you.
And it's quite a surprise.
It's quite unexpected for most people when it starts happening.
So back to my mom, what happened?
She's facing all this devastation that she was powerless against.
And as her son, I was, you can imagine how worried I was about my mom.
I thought, oh my gosh, it's what's going to happen to her?
You know, I was worried she might try to commit suicide or something.
And I was powerless.
I'm like, I can't. I would talk to her on the phone because I was away and not too far away.
But I'll talk to her on the phone.
I was trying to almost be like her counselor, but I would become very frustrated because I was realized, well, I can't change any of this for her.
And I would try to listen and be supportive.
But I mean, really, there was nothing I could do.
But what ended up happening?
What happened? The divorce happened.
Okay, she got a divorce.
She didn't want it, but it happened.
And then she had to leave her home.
We were living in Georgia, the state of Georgia in the United States.
So she moved back to Indiana, where I am now, and to be with her family with her mom and her dad.
We're both still alive at that time.
And her youngest brother and her youngest sister, all living in this town here.
So she wasn't totally alone.
She actually moved into the house and lived with my grandparents, her mom and dad.
So she was there with her own mom and dad.
And her brother and her sister, right, my aunt and uncle, were living in the same town.
Then my sister, you know, decided to go to college here at this small university, the small college in this same small town in Indiana.
And so my sister stayed right close to my mom and got to see my mom like almost every day, even while she was going to college, which was great.
So my mom ended up not being alone.
In fact, she ended up being less alone.
She ended up having many more people in her life than she did in Georgia before the divorce, because she had her mom and her dad and her dad did pass away, you know, a few years later.
But her mom lived to be 96.
So she was there with her mom and her with her parents.
And then her sister, my aunt, had three kids.
So that would be my mom's, you know, nephew and nieces.
And they would come over to the house.
One of them almost was almost living there with my mom and my grandmother.
So she had all, you know, her nephew, these nephews and nieces, nephew and nieces there at the house.
Very frequently, like all the time coming in and visiting and they're staying at the house a lot.
My sister coming in and dropping in a lot.
My uncle, my mom's brother there a lot.
So she actually had, you know, quite a very nice extended family social circle there.
So she wasn't alone.
She went and got trained as a dental assistant dentist, right?
Teeth, right? And got a nice job at a university in their dental area program.
Which she quite enjoyed.
It's funny because my mom was always like, you know, making me brush my teeth and very focused on having good teeth.
And so, you know, kind of laughed that that's what she ended up doing.
And she ended up enjoying that job quite a lot and working quite a lot.
And she got to work with children.
Eventually, as part of that job, she would go out and they would like go and they would like poor kids, kids that, you know, didn't have money to go to a dentist.
They would drive this van.
It was like a dentist office in a big, like a truck, really.
And then they would go to schools and then the kids that didn't have money for dentists, they would come in and they clean their teeth and take care of their teeth.
And my mom got to help do that.
She really loves, you know, my mom always loved children.
So she loved, loved, loved that.
So she ended up with a career and she did that for probably, what, I don't know, 20 years, maybe.
And it was, you know, I didn't she didn't make huge amounts of money, but it was a nice, solid job.
Good benefits for her, you know, with a good, you know, the university was a good employer.
And she found, you know, satisfaction in that.
And then the thing that made the biggest difference of all in my mom's life was when my sister had her first child.
So my mom got grandchildren.
So my mom, who was so worried about being lonely because of this divorce when she got older, actually ended up finally with seven grandchildren.
She ended up seven grandchildren and she, you know, she helped with the grandchildren.
She helped to raise them.
She was taking, she helped to take care of them and see them almost every day.
You know, five of those grandchildren were here in the same town with her.
My sister's kids. And then right, right near the end of her life, I ended up having twins and even though she was older and in terrible shape physically, she got on a plane that's that same year, like six months later, and she came and stayed with us in Japan and got and got to see our babies, too.
She was so happy and fulfilled and blessed by having so many grandkids as well.
I never would have imagined or guessed that she would end up so happy with so many people around her who loved her and cared about her when she got older.
You know, if, if, when that divorce happened, it just seemed hopeless.
So this is part of faith, too, is realizing that the past does not equal the future.
Even the present, however terrible it might be now, it doesn't mean the future will be terrible, even though you cannot imagine a better future.
Have faith because a better future is still possible, no matter how horrible everything seems now or in the past.
My mom's life seemed hopeless at that point when she got a divorce.
She had no hope. I had almost no hope for her.
And she ended up with a wonderful old age.
Have faith. And have faith that even if you feel weak, even if you feel powerless, even if you keep failing and failing and failing, even if you can't control your own mind and your own emotions, even if you feel you don't have enough energy, you don't have enough motivation, you're not good enough,
you feel depressed.
Even if all that's true, it doesn't matter because you just need faith.
You don't need to have all the power in yourself.
You don't need to be some, like some super motivated billionaire who wakes up at 4am and they work out every day and they're just super, super, super motivated, working, working, working like a crazy person all day, every day.
Oh, they never get tired.
They never get sad.
Okay, maybe these people exist and they're real.
I don't know. We only really see the public idea of these people.
We don't know what is really happening in their life when the camera is not on, when they're not talking, when they're not doing a podcast, when they're not being interviewed.
Maybe they are always super motivated.
I don't know, but maybe they're not.
But the point is, either way, those are very, very unusual people.
And most of us are never going to be like that.
And we don't even know if they are like that, in truth.
It's easy to look great on Facebook and social media and on the television.
It's really easy to look like, oh, I'm always happy and I'm in great shape and I always feel great.
Everything's perfect in my life.
Yeah, you can do that with videos and pictures and podcasts and media, but who knows?
What we do know is that many times, these famous people who seem so perfect in public, these especially celebrities, we do know that many times and years later, what happens?
They get divorced, they go into drug rehab because they're drug addicts.
They do all kinds of crazy stuff.
Right. So they had this image of everything's perfect.
Then like, oh, they're so famous.
Everybody loves them.
They're so beautiful or handsome.
They're super rich.
Everything's perfect.
Oh, they got the perfect wife or husband.
Everything's perfect.
But then years later, we find out, oh, actually, nope, that it was all pretend.
It was all an image.
So you don't need to have all the power in yourself.
If you find that you don't have enough power yourself, surrender and turn to faith in a higher power.
And I'm not trying to convert anyone to a certain religion or anything.
So if you have your own religious tradition already, turn to that.
If you're Muslim, then have faith in Allah.
Right. If you're Sanatana Dharami, have faith in Krishna.
If you're more of a agnostic, you're not any particular religion, you can have faith in, you can call it Dao, you can call it the universe.
You can just say higher power.
If you're a Christian, have faith in Jesus Christ.
But turn to that faith, that there is a power higher than you.
That this world, that our being, that who we are is more than just, you know, physical stuff.
We're not just things.
We are spirit soul.
And if that's true, then there is something greater that we are connected to, that we are sustained by, that we were created by, that we are part of.
Just surrender. Say just have faith, pray to whoever it is, you want, whichever, whichever name you wish to pray to.
And just I'm hopeless, I'm powerless.
Give me faith. Give me strength.
Help me and open yourself to that higher power.
To give you whatever you need, whatever strength, whatever discipline, whatever energy, creativity, whatever it is you need, have faith that it will happen.
There's a phrase in English, it's an idiom, God's delays are not God's denials.
And you might have to wait, you might have to go through a time of difficulty and pain and suffering, as my mom did.
She had a hard, hard, hard, I don't know, five years, at least.
But have faith, because at the end of it, she had probably a much happier life at the end of her life than she ever imagined she would or could.
Tony Robbins likes to say, the past does not equal the future.
It's also a nice idea, meaning you may have had a horrible past, abuse, failure, weakness, addiction, on and on horrible things.
That doesn't mean the future is going to be like that.
If there's faith that that's not the case.
And you can look and find lots of people who changed all of that.
And you can look to Alcoholics Anonymous, to how they have helped millions at this point of people completely change their lives from miserable Alcoholics who've destroyed their lives and often the lives of other people in their families.
Who through faith, have completely and absolutely changed to have incredibly happy, healthy lives and to be of great help and love to other people.
Get on Amazon, go to a bookstore, you can find hundreds, thousands of books by people with these kinds of stories.
And in fact, what you will find when you, you can also get on YouTube and find countless stories about this, you can find near -death experiences, I highly recommend.
Watch a bunch of videos, watch a lot of videos on YouTube about people who had near -death experiences.
Or just people who have gone through terrible things and come out, who have found through faith, amazing strength.
And one thing you'll find one lesson, the last lesson I'll leave you with, is that many time trials, difficulties, pain, suffering, hopelessness, powerlessness, open the door.
In your life, in your spirit, a door to faith, go through that door.
It's an opportunity, and you have two choices at that terrible time.
And it might be something really horrible, or it could be just something small, like you're trying to learn English, but you're lazy and you don't do it enough.
So it can be anything from small to big, any problem, any difficulty, or it could be your whole life is falling apart.
Either one, doesn't matter.
But at that time, there's a door open.
You can go through that door with faith.
You can have faith in a higher power that's, there's something more than just you.
That you don't need to do it all alone.
And you can go through that and find amazing strength and power.
And on the other side of that door is an amazing life.
A much better life.
Or you can close that door and just stay, hopeless, bitter, depressed, lazy.
You can try to do it all yourself.
Keep failing. I recommend go through that door.
In faith. It's just such an amazing power.
That, that, that, that power is beyond you.
I remember also again at a Tony Robbins event.
So this is nothing specific to any religion, but I, one of the best things I ever heard and learned at a Tony Robbins event.
It was leadership seminar, I believe.
And it wasn't even Tony Robbins.
It was one of his like assistants teaching it.
And he talks about different kinds of consciousness.
I think I've done a lesson about this in VIP.
But he calls it, you know, he calls it to you, by you, through you.
Three kinds of consciousness.
What does that mean?
He's like the victim idea, the weak, weak, weak idea.
And indeed really almost, you know, just a, just a terrible idea is that everything happens to you.
This is the lowest level.
Oh, everything's happening to me.
Oh, I'm, I'm a victim.
It's terrible. Everyone's bad to me.
All these bad things are happening to me.
Ah, and you're focusing on everything happening to you.
The next level up, the second level, which is much better, and this is what most self -help is, is by you.
And this is where you focus on personal power, right?
Everything is happening because of me.
I'm doing it. I have the power to create my life.
I have the power to change.
I have the power to create anything I want to do, anything I want.
I can be rich and successful and famous and, right?
Everything is done by me.
It's my power. That's level two, and that, that's better than level one.
You'll feel better and you will have more success.
And level two is useful.
We need some of that.
Gives us some confidence.
But ultimately, it's not the highest level.
Why? Because we find the limit.
We live long enough and things start happening.
Then you realize, oh, I don't have the power to overcome this.
There are certain things in myself, and there are certain things in the world and with just other people that I'm powerless against.
And that's where that third level of consciousness, through you, that means there's some higher power that is coming into you and working through you, coming through you and filling you up.
And that power is indeed unlimited.
That's the real unlimited power.
It doesn't come from just inside you.
You're limited. We all know this.
It's obvious. Just give it, just think about it for two seconds and it's obvious you can find all the limits that you have.
And many of us are very limited.
But that higher power is unlimited.
And so that's why this power of faith is so strong.
But to have it, you have to admit that you're powerless and you have to surrender and you have to be humble.
And so this is the hard part.
Moving from level two to level three in your consciousness requires humility.
Where you were saying, ah, I'm not all powerful.
I'm powerless in so many areas.
I'm not better than everyone else.
I'm not great. So please help me.
Right? It's a humility.
And it's hard for us because we're proud and we want to be strong and I want everyone else to think we're strong and we want to think we're strong ourselves.
So this is hard to do.
I can tell you because I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings before because I worked in a hospital with addicts and we would take them to meetings.
And I would kind of sometimes sit outside and I could hear them still.
And this part about being powerless and surrendering to a higher power for the new addicts, the new alcoholics was extremely tough.
Why? They're so proud.
I don't want to, I'm not powerless.
Well, obviously you are because you're destroying your life.
You destroyed your marriage.
Your kids hate you and don't want anything near you.
You lost your job. Your health is terrible.
You're miserable. Nobody likes you.
Nobody trusts you. You're powerless.
If you had power, why didn't you change it?
Right? Pride. Pride, pride, pride.
They don't want to say it, but when you can let go of that pride and just surrender, then it's just such an amazing feeling.
So there is a great power there.
You don't have to do it all yourself.
It doesn't have to be inside of you.
It is amazing. So I encourage you, have faith, have faith, a rational faith, not mindless faith.
This is rational faith.
It's rational. It's based on the experiences of thousands of other people, millions.
And it's a faith that you also will experience the power of.
You got to try and it takes some time, but you also experience it.
So that is the source of unlimited power.
There is unlimited power, but it's not going to come just from you.
It will come through faith.
Lots of love to you.
However things are going in your life, I hope and I wish you faith and love and goodness in all of your life.
Until next time, see you soon.
Bye for now.
