Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero
2025 MINDSET | DON'T LET ANOTHER YEAR SLIP AWAY | Powerful Motivational Speech Compilation | 3 Hours
Fri, 13 Dec 2024
What does it mean to pursue the exceptional? Seth Godin’s insight in The Dip—“Quit or be exceptional, average is for losers”—challenges us to reframe how we see life’s journey. Why settle for the middle ground when life’s most remarkable opportunities await those bold enough to venture beyond the ordinary? It’s not about doing everything but about prioritizing what matters most and stepping away from the distractions that keep us tethered to mediocrity. Quitting isn’t failure—it’s strategy. It’s the courageous act of leaving behind what doesn’t serve your higher purpose to chase something more meaningful. This episode explores the power of intentionality, the art of saying “no” to the wrong things so you can fully say “yes” to the right ones. Life is too short to simply exist; what will you choose to pursue? Monday Motivation Newsletter: https://www.eddiepinero.com/newsletter Free Ebook: www.eddiepinero.com/ebook YouTube: www.eddiepinero.com/youtube
Chapter 1: What does it mean to pursue the exceptional?
Seth Godin wrote in his book, The Dip, Quit or be exceptional, average is for losers. And I love this, and I love it for a few reasons. First, it calls out the fact that if we are going to live, we might as well live in pursuit of the exceptional. Why just float by? Why just stand there while time elapses around you? No, seek out the things that matter.
Exist not in life's shadows, but in its fringes. Where few look, but the best things live. The places where most only dream of, but the courageous go. Quit or be exceptional. Second, it suggests that quitting isn't always a bad thing. And context is everything here. It's a beautiful thing if it's done for the right reason.
In other words, it's far better to quit the wrong thing to pursue what matters than it is to stay and immerse yourself in a lifelong dance with mediocrity. It's not that you quit, it's why you quit. I have a problem with the word quit to begin with. Stopping the wrong thing is less quitting than it is pivoting. It's evolving. But ultimately, that's neither here nor there. It's semantics, right?
Chapter 2: Why is quitting sometimes a strategic choice?
The moral of the story is if I never quit, personally, what I believe to be wrong for me, I'd still be in the same building I was 10 years ago. And I'm not being emotional here, I'm being practical. To become your best self, you have to shed yourself of the things that aren't you. There's an idea that what we say no to is one of the most important components of growth.
So if you take that and create a little thought experiment, if you have the courage to adventure and try new things, Some of those new things will inevitably fall short of expectations. They'll be wrong for you. They can't all be aligned. And so what then? Do you do the wrong things forever? Or do you take the lesson and move on to those level 10 opportunities? That's what this is about.
Quit or be exceptional. Leave mediocrity behind. Do you have to? Well, you don't have to do anything, but the question is, what do you want? Because a world where you chase down the exceptional will be better for you. It will be better for those close to you. It will be better for the world at large. You will live a fuller life.
And since you can never give more than what you are, it means the amount of value you can then distribute to others will grow. What we give is directly proportional to what we allow ourselves to be. So don't be mediocre. Don't allow that. Don't even entertain the thought that's not you. Quit or be exceptional. Go all in or don't go. Believe in it fully or walk away. Average is for losers.
The fence is for people who forfeit the upside in an attempt to escape the downside. Completely unaware that the true loss is the moment of reflection years down the road where you wish you had the courage to do a little more, to chase down the things that invigorated you, to wish you'd lived a little more boldly with just a tad more conviction. Quit or be exceptional.
Simply put, whether we realize it or not, we have defied the odds in simply existing. And I don't care that this idea is pushed to the point of it being cliche. I still don't think we get it. I don't think we've grasped the magnitude.
Perhaps a metaphor we could use to help us think about it and still not indicative of our reality but worth a shot is walking into a theme park and spending the entire day standing by the entrance, holding the ticket, right? Or being handed a lottery ticket and keeping it in your pocket for fear of what could go wrong when you cash it out. Being there but not experiencing there.
See, chasing down the exceptional feels good because it's what you were meant to do. And if you haven't found it yet, don't give up. Find what lights you up until you can capture it and immerse yourself in it. Be the best at it. Let curiosity lead you to exploration and findings that few would be tenacious enough to discover. Quit or be exceptional.
Or maybe better put, don't stop pursuing that thing worthy of your commitment. And once you have that target, go. Like everything is riding on it, go. Like it's the sun around which all else revolves, go. Life is simply too short to leave your greatness on the shelf. If you build yourself up, the world conforms. One of my favorite stories is in Gary Keller's book, The One Thing.
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Chapter 3: How do you identify what truly matters in life?
another form of freedom, that shackle around your ankle that you've been carrying with you. Greg McKeown, his book, I scream it from the mountaintops, essentialism was the first person to teach me, hey, growth is not always acquiring. Sometimes growth is getting rid of those things we are carrying around. We carry too much. Empty your pockets of the burdens. Free yourself of those things.
And that, again, comes back to this awareness. It comes back to looking around and doing an audit of how you spend your time. And it's mind-boggling, like, to take a day, for example, and really pay attention to everything you did and try and look into the rationale behind it and where it's taking you. A lot of things we do just to do. That's what you need to take an ax to.
It's been said simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The internet attributes that quote to everybody from Lincoln to, you know, Da Vinci. But it's absolutely true. When you can identify what matters and allow your world to revolve around that, That's number two. And number three is go. Start. Which seems easy, right? You take a step. How complicated could that be? Perfection. Fear.
Not knowing. All those things keep us from moving forward. And I want to gift you with this thought that helped me tremendously. You're not supposed to know. You're not supposed to know how things work out. You're not supposed to have the answers. You're not supposed to have a perfect map or game plan. Life is chaos. It's supposed to be messy.
And the people that get the most from it smile and step into that abyss knowing they'll pick those pieces up along the way. That's not a little detail involved in personal growth. That is personal growth. That's the whole thing. That's the story. You go before you're ready because you'll never be ready. And I can find those people, I can point to them, talk about what they're gonna do, if only.
They're gonna start something when X, Y, and Z happens. Well, that's a forever game. You go before you're ready. Even this studio, right, this is a new studio, it's a new setup, just a little spark to reinvigorate creativity and production. It's like moving things around. Is it perfect? Is everything lit up? Should I be closer to the camera, further from the camera?
All these things that I'm going back and forth with until I hit that ultimate light bulb moment, who cares? Pick up the mic, say something, and iterate. 10 versions from now, 10 videos from now, this probably will not be the same. Perfect. But there will not be 10 videos from now if you don't go. And so that's what I encourage you.
I encourage you to remember that perfection is just fear in disguise. The people that wait for all the answers before they start, they wait forever. Your time is now, so go. So I'm going to leave you with that, the beautiful story from Gary Keller's book, The One Thing. When you put the man together, the world falls into place. So give yourself permission to put the man together.
The world wants you to win. It has all the tools. It has everything you need. You just gotta go. Put the man together and the world will fall into place. I wouldn't make excuses for you. I wouldn't look you in the eye and tell you everything is great when in actuality the wheels are falling off the wagon.
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Chapter 4: What steps can you take to prioritize your goals?
Sometimes it's about what you've already become. It's about who you are Now. I'm gonna be selfish. Because this message is exactly what I need right now. Exactly what I need to walk myself through. And so I'm gonna dive into it fully with the hope
that in some context, in some capacity, you can pull this message or idea and inject it into your own life, whatever it is you're going through, whatever it is you're navigating. Long story short, it's the shiny objects again. It's forgetting what brought me here, what I love, what matters most.
It's looking around, knowing the destination, but spending time doing me things that aren't bringing me there. So how does that happen? Misalignment tends to sneak up like a lion stalking its prey. In fact, sometimes I imagine that the value of a giant mosquito net that could be placed around the things that matter so that all that complexity can't make its way in.
Let the externalities remain external, right? And I walk, and I think, and I wonder, why is simplicity so difficult to protect? Why is alignment always seeking to collapse in on itself? And personally, why is my inclination, the second I stop paying attention, to wander off the tracks and navigate in circles? And well, that's the good news.
It's like when you realize you've wandered off track or you're in arenas that aren't yours, you can finally do something about it. In fact, that may be the most important part. Life is about casting and reeling in. Casting and reeling in. It's fire, aim. Fire, aim. Fire, aim. Maybe wandering places we shouldn't be shines the greatest spotlight on where we should be.
It's the best way to wake up one's intuition. Because intuition tells you what you already know. But its magic is that it tells you so loudly that it drowns out the minutia. The brain needs the heart. Otherwise, we become capable doers of meaningless things. I think life-changing things generally are not complex things.
Let's do the exercise, the same exercise I've been doing for years, the ultimate self-awareness assessment. A, where is your finish line? Close your eyes. Do you see it? Can you picture it? Okay, perfect. Now B, how are you spending your time? And is how you're spending your time taking you to that finish line? Is who you're spending your time with taking you to that finish line?
Or maybe you need to shake the snow globe entirely. Maybe you need to define what your finish lines are, which may just be the spot I currently find myself. Micro example, the other day I was with my trainer doing some barbell overhead shoulder press and, you know, was focusing on the top of the movement.
And he says, look, for what we are trying to do here, you know, sculpt and define your shoulders, you're paying attention to things that don't matter, that are not creating the greatest impact. The greatest impact is going to be the lower third of the movement. So focus there. And it's a smaller example of a macro question.
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Chapter 5: How can you embrace the discomfort of growth?
Find yourself stronger than you were. It's like going to the gym, breaking the muscle down so that you can be built back up stronger. And so perhaps, The value here is an opportunity for you to similarly think to yourself, what am I doing and is it taking me where I most want to go? And if not, it doesn't mean you've wasted time.
It's not an indictment on the steps you've taken or the paths you've walked. It's a celebration of the awareness, of the newness, the novelty in the next chapter. It's a celebration of the fact that you, just like me, can go anywhere we want to go next. The wake of the boat does not drive the boat. This moment in and of itself is new. It's a rebirth, a creation. What will we do with it?
We go too far in order to regulate and find ourselves better than we were when that dust finally settles. But what's absolutely imperative is asking the questions. It's looking at your own life like an eagle flying overhead, seeing things holistically, big picture. Emerson said famously, hitch your wagon to a star. So find the star that lights up your soul.
And make sure each step guides you, not away from, but towards that light. Those little blasts of intuition, they matter. They mean something. They are reminding the brain that doing the wrong things will bring empty victories. Trust me, you can win a race you care nothing about, and a lot of people do. Define your terms and execute. Choose your mountaintop and ascend.
We explore in order to refine. So let each step be a chiseling away of what no longer serves you so that you can capture the pieces of life that light up your soul. I'm going to share with you a general metaphor about life. It's brought me a ton of value, helped me maintain perspective over the years, and I think it's going to help you as well.
I'm going to be using YouTube as my example here, but worry not, this applies to everything. I just happen to be immersed in the content creation space. So to frame it, the growth of a YouTube channel is a lot like the stock market. You certainly want it trending up over time. You want your work to reach, you know, as many people as it can.
But there are and have been segments along the way where that growth slows down. There are times when the channel overall, it just gets less engagement, less views, all of it. And you look at it when that's happening, when you're in the midst of one of those dips and you think, oh no, what have I done? Anytime something you're creating slows down, it can be jolting.
And this has over the years occurred many times. And every time my instinct is the same. It's, oh, you know, that type of just duress and I put a lot of time, energy, effort into this. This work is some of what I'm most proud of in my life. So it's like sound the alarm right now. I need to figure this out. And every time things eventually correct and continue in that upward trend.
Sometimes it takes a little longer than others, but I get there. And here's what I've learned. When there is a dip or a slowing down of anything that's going in the opposite direction of the way you want it to go, I do four things. One, pause and breathe. Because you have to. Regain, recapture that perspective.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of taking action now?
When the heavens open up and rain pours down and we run for shelter. When life presents us with vagueness, with flashes of possibility, we long for mastery. It's more instinct than anything else. But could it be that that instinct that we run to like moths to a flame is leading us astray, that it doesn't have our best interests at heart?
Could it be that we're so worried about protecting and maintaining an acceptable image for the world that we forget to build something internally that's worth protecting? What if that shaking is what brings down the foundations that held us back? What if that rain washes away the limits of yesterday as we evolve into something more?
And what if those flashes of possibility require of us not mastery, no, not yet, but a willingness to be the fool? And what if that willingness isn't an unfortunate dead end, but a beginning? In one of his lectures at the University of Toronto, Jordan Peterson said, if you are not willing to be a fool, you can't be a master.
In the cycle that is self-discovery, that is growth, we have to at some point step into an arena that's foreign to us, that we don't yet understand. We have to be willing to operate with inadequate resources, trusting that they'll be picked up along the way. And that's a lot to take in. It's painful to know that others are going to have knowledge and skills and competencies that you won't.
That you'll willingly inject yourself into the bottom of some hierarchy with nothing more than aspirations. But that willingness is your vehicle. And what's clear is that everyone wants the moon, but very few people have the courage to start constructing that spaceship. Very few have the courage to be the student.
That's why our inclination is to quit when we can't snap our fingers and magically be on our way, when we can't leap past that wandering around the unknowns. The reality is we have to fight to scrap to obtain that sense of belonging in a particular competency. And just talking about it brings me back. It's an obstacle that we all face. It's super real to me.
I remember being featured on a podcast where the host literally asked me, why should I listen to what you have to say? Like, who are you? Why are you roadmapping your journey? I remember fighting for relevance in an area in which, at the time, I knew almost nothing about. And I love how Peterson articulates this battle.
He says, at some point, you'll want to make a change and you'll feel like an imposter. And guess what? You are. But you have to be. You'll ultimately feel worse if you don't do it. That's imposter syndrome. Feeling like a stranger in your own body. And guess what? It's not wrong. It's just a beginning. I like explaining it like jumping into a cold pool. It feels uncomfortable at first.
It feels out of place, but then things normalize. They become comfortable. And what's the other option? To fear that minute of discomfort and never jump in? It's what we need to tell ourselves when we want something, but the climb seems too steep, right? That climb is manageable. You'll acclimate. The adversaries pushing beyond that fear of starting anew.
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Chapter 7: How can you turn imperfections into strengths?
Well, I found value in the understanding that we consistently operate in such an extreme level of commotion, right? We've learned to navigate consistent noise penetrating our existence and our lives, but we haven't really learned how to separate ourselves from it. There is always buzzing, humming, and shaking as we go about our day to day.
We're so intertwined with our surroundings that even when we seek solitude, we're unable to totally remove ourselves or pull ourselves from the noise. And to me, that weekend was just an incredible reminder of the importance, the significance of remembering to separate ourselves from the world from time to time.
The value of truly being alone with our thoughts, shielding ourselves from the externalities. It's not that we have to exist in total silence and solitude somewhere like Northern Washington, which I believe is one of the locations from the article Ashley cited as one of our quietest locations.
It's more so that we must realize the world around us is constantly seeking to inundate every thought with impressions and ideas and stories and other noise. The world around us is constantly seeking to influence. That's the million dollar point. Even when we don't realize it, we are navigating ideas, engines, and electronics.
There is always something placed between who we are and what's most important to us. And it's imperative that we recognize that. See, peace will never fall out of the sky and land at our doorsteps. It must be sought out. The curtains covering who we truly are must be pulled back. And without this concentrated effort, life, you know, simply moves us down the stream of life.
Well, we assume it was our own swimming that created the change. Control requires separation from the everyday. And so here's to making time to truly separate ourselves from what doesn't matter so that we can focus on what does. To identifying the noise so that we can, when necessary, remove ourselves from it. It is by knowing true silence that we truly know ourselves.
And that's a relationship that is invaluable. Find something to make yours. I connect every few months with some of my good friends to strategize, kind of reflect back on the previous quarter, plan for the new one with each of our businesses, kind of share ideas, stuff like that.
And I was chatting with my friend Keith about life before he found success in what he's doing now, the struggle and the turbulence he faced, as well as ultimately his decision, and that's entirely what it was, to turn things around. And I've talked about his backstory before, so I'm not gonna get too much into it, but essentially he grew up in a very negative environment.
Dealt with a ton of adversity, but got through it. Started his own national business, installing and repairing commercial pizza ovens, and the guy's just crushing it. And, you know, our conversation in that moment wasn't so much about the doing. It was more on the overcoming and how mentally we had to recreate ourselves to have any chance of moving beyond what we knew.
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Chapter 8: Why is personal growth a moral duty?
That's when life really starts paying dividends. You're not existing, you're living. Or as I've recently discussed, you're empowering yourself to not just sit in the room, but be in the room fully. I use entrepreneurship as the model for this discussion because that's been such a huge part of my life where I've been injecting my time and attention and yeah, risk.
But the point is not that everyone needs to stop what they're doing and become an entrepreneur. That's one path of many, obviously. The point is that there is a risk-reward dynamic in entrepreneurship that we should all understand, extract, and inject into our own lives where it best applies.
We've learned to settle in so many ways that we must know there is tremendous value in asking, what is it in my life I want to invest in? Make mine. Give myself the opportunity to experience the excitement of defining the things I care about and watching them grow.
Whether your current arena is entrepreneurship or motherhood, fatherhood, academics, a particular relationship, some combination of these or anything else. To make magic out of the mundane requires we first make it ours. We take ownership, responsibility for the journey. We accept the risk and chase down the rewards.
You can do amazing things when you realize what you're capable of and commit to its manifestation. So in a world where, yes, we are conditioned to fail, step out from those subtle shackles of learned helplessness. You are anything but helpless. It's just that you've yet to reach out and pull your dreams into your orbit.
You've yet to put a stake in the ground and say this matters and it's time to see it through. Because once you do that, the good stuff begins. I often ask myself, what differentiates those who wish for better outcomes and those who do something about it? What separates the dreaming from the progress and the wishing from the reality? Sure, life is complex.
There are a lot of moving parts to understand. But I think this element is simple. Those who build things in life are willing to not only see a reality that hasn't yet materialized, but they also understand that in a world of no, they have to be the yes.
They have to believe in their ability to drive towards finish lines that no one else sees, and see meaning cannot come to fruition without that discomfort. Or as Nietzsche put it, one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star, and that's just it. Most people see what is, most people conform, they do not. create.
To change something means you have to be the metaphorical eagle amongst pigeons, flying above all that, everyone, everything else, superseding the limiting beliefs that shackle others to their one-dimensional realities. But most importantly, it means you can see. You can see what no one else can. You have line of sight to what no one else understands.
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