Working on Your Psychological Freedom

Today I want to talk about working on your psychological freedom.

The freedom of life comes in many, many forms.

Yesterday I wasn’t able to do the radio show, and I don’t know if they told you why. But I’ve told you for the last 30 days that I have had a leg injury that just hasn’t quite healed.

Two or three days ago I woke up and the injury had started to fester and start to become infected. I wasn’t really sure what it was. It was just, you know, a little reddening around the area then it grew and got worse. And by the second day I started catching a fever. And I had a hundred-plus-degree fever and took all the medication I could to try to break it.

It didn’t go away. Got up the second day, 101. And by that time my whole leg had just blown up. It was obvious—because I have had this type of thing happen to me before—that it was infected.

So I went to the doctor. And I couldn’t get to the doctor I needed which was the infectious disease doctor. So we asked them who he could send us to. Sent us to a general practitioner, and the general practitioner took one look at my leg and said, man, you are in trouble. Said I have got to get back with this infectious disease doctor. So he called the infectious disease doctor, and he then out of nowhere, out of the blue, decided he had time to see me. So I went over to the infectious disease doctor. He looked at me and said, man, you have got to go to the hospital.

Now, you have to understand, a couple years ago I went to the hospital and caught staph. They cut three giant—what you would almost called like ice cream scoops of flesh out of my body in three different places that had to be drained and packed every day for the eight months. It took eight months to heal, many more months just to get well. So when this guy told me he was going to send me to the hospital, I looked him straight in the eye and said no, I am not going.

And he was like dumbfounded that somebody would argue with a doctor. I said no, doctor, said look, I am not going to go in there and spend a couple thousand dollars a day to lay there for you to give me antibiotics. Give me the antibiotics and I will take them. If you want me to come up here and you administer them to me, I will come up here and you can administer. But I am not going to go lay in infection-laden, diseased building full of sick and dying people that are going to give me their diseases just to fight off the disease that you can give me the antibiotics for. So he finally gave me the antibiotics.

Persistence + The Right Map

And I had all kinds of things going on. It’s interesting. I had a meeting with my partners—first meeting with my partners in this big Class A property that I am doing. And it was very important because this is the first time everybody’s going to be able to get all the inside information and be able to ask questions. I had 101 temperature, I didn’t feel like going. But I decided it was necessary to get this done.

Now, if you ever read Stephen Covey, Covey talks about how unless you have the right road map then persistence, diligence doesn’t mean anything. Hard work is absolutely useless when you are working towards absolutely nothing. Yet if you have a major, major, goal with the right map then persistence and diligence makes a big difference.

So I persisted and I was diligent and I went to the meeting. Afterwards I became ill again, and I went home and went to bed. During the night I woke up every four hours and took the medication that I was supposed to be taking—both the pain and stuff to kill the fever and also the antibiotics. I woke up this morning the swelling had gone down massively, the pain had gone away, the fever was nonexistent, and I just couldn’t believe it. It was like it was a miracle. Yet the truth of the matter was it wasn’t a miracle, it was just doing the right thing and being persistent at what you do.

Money in a Box

So I got up today, and I went out and I went to lunch. And I went to this little Vietnamese restaurant where I have gone a thousand times before because it’s close to where our office was before. And I went in there, and I was just almost devastated because the sadness in my heart to see what was going on. This lady who used to be a model, she was like had won some pageant. She was a beautiful, beautiful Vietnamese lady is now in probably her 60s, mid-60s.

She’s wearing stockings to hold her legs in—you know those vein-contracting stockings. And her son who is — I have been there 20 years, so I have watched him grow up—he’s probably now in his mid-thirties. He went to college and works in the restaurant. And now his little sister, his young sister 18 years of age is going to college and working in the restaurant.

And their entire life, their entire family they work 12 hours a day in this restaurant—or whatever it is. I don’t know if it’s 12 or if it’s 10 hours a day. But they work there their entire family. It’s a little dark—because they keep all the blinds closed. It’s a little dark, dingy, small, little restaurant. It’s great food—not putting them down at all. But can you imagine that her life 30, 40, 50, 60 years of doing this, the son’s life now 30, 40 years of doing this — 20, 30 years of doing this. Now the next generation are spending their entire life trading time for money in a little black box.

Put the Big Rocks in First

Now, does diligence really matter when all you have to do is get out one more plate of slop, one more plate of food, one more soda, one more water, one more this, one more that, when you do continuously repetitive, non-consequential things over and over again with your life, and then you wake up one day at 40, 50, 60 years of age and wonder why your life really doesn’t have in it the things you want? That is the recipe for disaster.

I have told you the story about the big rocks before when the time management guy put the big rocks in the jar. And then when that was full he said, “Is it full?” And the people said, “Yes.” And he said, “No.” And he put the pebbles in the jar and shook them up and said then asked if that was full. And they said, “Yes.” And he said, “No.”

And he put sand in the jar and he said, “Now is it full?” “Yeah, now it’s full.” And he said, “No.” And he poured water in the jar, and when it was all done he said, “What did you learn about this?” And the people said, “There’s always more time in our lives to get more things done.” He said, “No, that’s what everybody thinks about life.” He said, “The truth is you’d better put the big rocks in first because if you don’t put the big important ones in first, then everything else will fall apart.”

I’m Not Walking Away

Can you imagine me walking away from a $25 million project that is earning an instant $7 million capture of equity that’s going to produce a million dollars a year in profit—and I walked away from that because I had 101 temperature? Could you imagine me doing that? Yet I see people walk away from the greatest things in their lives because of sickness and health and age.

I want to get back to this age thing. This is really starting to irritate me. The older I get the more irritated I get about getting old because I can’t do the things I want to do. I am 52 going on 25. I just keep injuring myself because I keep trying to live life with the expectancy that I expect of it.

What I am going to share with you is that as much as I am mad at myself that I can’t do anymore, I have empathy or sympathy for you that you never got to do it, because during your formative years your younger age you were working and working and working, and now you’re old and you are working and working. And when you finally get to retire what’s going to be left?

I mean, if I’m the way I am and I am an athlete at 52 and I have got problems, what do non-athletes run into when they get to be in their 60s by the time they’re retired? My friends, it’s time to change. It’s time to take back your life from corporate America and become free again.