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Inspiring Speeches and Interviews

Dan Lok | My Hero is My Teacher
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Dan Lok | My Hero is My Teacher

Dan Lok - Believe In Kids Entrepreneur and author Dan Lok shares a life-changing moment with his teacher Ms. Fallon who saw in him the potential he never saw in himself. This is a story about the power of teachers. Transcript: I got bullied. I wasn't good at communicating with people. I was very afraid because I couldn't speak a word of English. At the time I remember I had to deliver a little speech in order to pass the class. You know, to get the grades. And every time I had to give a presentation, anything like that, I would skip the class because I was so afraid. I would just hide in the bathroom because I didn't want to be found. And Ms. Feldon saw that. She was like, "Well, what are you doing, Dan? You need to do your speech." And I said, "Ms. Feldon, I can't do it. I'm so afraid. I'm so scared. I have stage fright." And she said, "You know what? If you don't do the speech, I cannot let you pass." She said, "Why don't you come to my office after class and I will help you. I will coach you." And she did. And she was helping me overcome some of my shyness. Speaker 1: I still remember I was very nervous. My palms were all sweaty and my face grew pale, and I did it! She let me pass. And she was the first one to believe in me that, "Hey, you know what? You can do better. Don't let the circumstances hold you back." And she took the time. That's very important. Fast-forward many, many, many years later, walked right into school. I said, "I've come to thank you." She said, "For what?" And I told her the whole story. Remember back then? And she said, "Yeah, of course I remember!" Right? And she said, "I always saw something in you. That you've got potential, you're a great kid." And I gave her two books and she was shocked. "What is this?" I said, "I wrote these two books." And so she was very, very emotional. That was a very special experience. Speaker 1: As a teacher myself, to so many people, young people, entrepreneurs around the world, I understand the impact that you could have on somebody by one gesture, one encouragement, one quote, one story. Spending a little bit more time with a kid after school just giving him a little bit of encouragement. She believed in me. And I think people underestimate the power of having someone believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

Christian Mickelsen | Why Poverty Does Not Define You
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Christian Mickelsen | Why Poverty Does Not Define You

Christian Mickelsen - Change Your MindsetLife coach extraordinaire Christian Mickelsen shares how he overcame a life of bullying, poverty, and debt to find true wealth. He reveals how transforming your mindset from one of poverty to one of abundance and gratitude can lead to success.

Shaz Khan | How to Live a Successful Life
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Shaz Khan | How to Live a Successful Life

Shaz Khan - What's On Your List? “I have never read nor have I written a eulogy that expressed how accomplished a person was, or how brilliant of a worker they were.” Transcript: What is a successful life? To answer this question we must observe the paradox of our priorities. How we pursue lifestyles built on our resumes, yet as we knowingly approach death we yearn to be remembered by every quality except that resume. You see, during the course of our lives, we seek success of every tangible sort, but when it comes to looking back on a life once lived, those tangible things, the measuring cups of our entire existence, seem emptier than ever. I have never read, nor have I written a eulogy that expressed how accomplished a person was, or how brilliant of a worker they were. Even the most celebrated innovators are not eulogized by the impact of their inventions, but by their motives, the bonds they formed, acts of kindness, and what they meant to the people around them. So if you wonder what a successful life really feels like, all you have to do is close your eyes and think about what you want your eulogy to sound like. What words will be used by loved ones describing and celebrating your legacy when you die? List those words. Internalize this list. Memorize it. Stare at it every day. What you're staring at is your personal definition of success. It sounds crazy, but everything else you're pursuing, everything else you whine and worry about is secondary, and if you're going to do those secondary things make sure they serve your list. Make sure they increase your capacity to live by those qualities. Stop chasing things that aren't on your list, because that list is all you have, and that, my friends, is the only way to live a successful life, with intent, not regret. What's on your list?

Jordan Belfort | How To Find The Key Element
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Jordan Belfort | How To Find The Key Element

Jordan Belfort - Find The Balance In this incredible motivational story, famous stockbroker Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street, reveals the one reason that got him back on the straight and narrow. His life was so remarkable, Leonardo DiCaprio got to play him in a movie. Transcript: Wolves had once roamed free there in the Western United States, right? Ruled their ecosystem, and they'd been made extinct, by hunters or whatever, right? And they did an experiment, and they introduced, or reintroduced, 14 wolves into this area. And the area was, you know, sort of like, from an ecosystem definition, shot. Like, there wasn't a lot of vegetation, not any flowers, there wasn't a lot of water around. And they reintroduced these 14 wolves, just to sort of put them back in the area. Well, it's so mind-boggling, but like 20 years later, or 15 years later, the whole place is blossoming, and there's water, and rivers, and everything, because what happened was, apparently when they killed the wolves, it threw the whole ecosystem out of balance. That's a really interesting metaphor, because you know, you look at it like is there really ... You know, is there absolute good? Is there absolutely bad? People killed the wolves to save the sheep from being eaten by the wolves, yet in the end, by killing the wolf, they destroyed the whole ecosystem, right? It's about balance, you know? And I think when people watch the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, it's important that they look at that movie and say, "You know what? Okay, you know, I get it. It's glamorous, and it's fun," you know, because I'm not going to deny that it was fun. It was glamorous, yeah, but there's something called balance in there, that when you are that character, that never ends well. Like, it just never ends well. If you're out there, partying like a rockstar every single night, you know, please, I'm just telling you. It is not going to end well for you, because you can only do that for so long before something happens, or you'll start to get worse and worse. You'll spiral out of control. The key is balance. The key is moderation, in everything that you do.

Les Brown | How Bamboo Trees Will Bring Out Your Best Self
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Les Brown | How Bamboo Trees Will Bring Out Your Best Self

Les Brown - Go Hard In an ancient far east nugget of wisdom, motivational genius and raconteur Les Brown shares a parabole of change and self-improvement. Transcript: Life is hard. See it's hard when you are 49 years old been working on a job for 17 years and they come in and tell you you're finished and give you one week's severance pay and you have to start all over again. It's hard when you're married and raising children and your children are crawling and your husband dies unexpectedly. It's hard handling just the tragedies of life. It's hard when you're working on something and, and you put everything you have in it and it doesn't work out, you lose your money and other people's money. It's hard, it was rough when I lost my job and I could not find a job. It was humiliating and embarrassing borrowing money and then I couldn't pay the money back when I told them I would. That's rough, how people look at you, how they respond to you, it's very hard, it's humiliating. Here's what I discovered that happens to you in life that you will go through things and while you're going through them you can't understand why it's happening to 'ya but after you go through it and you get back and you look at it, then you say oh, now I understand why I needed that lesson. Have you ever had it happen to you raise your hand, did it ever happen to you that, that I couldn't understand it there but after I got through it then I saw that that was preparing me for bigger and better things. As you go through the challenges of life and you look at it and embrace whatever comes to you don't run from it, step toward it. Don't try and duck it like most people do. See most people want it easy, see if you easy come, easy what, easy go, see but when you go at what you're going to deal with and you deal with the difficulties of it, when you handle those hard things close at hand, making those hard decisions right now that you don't wanna make, learning those things that you don't like to do, but you know that in order for you to get where you wanna go, this is one of the hoops that you have to flip through. And I'm saying to you whatever you gotta do, do it, because if you don't life is gonna whoop you until you surrender, and say, okay, alright, alright, alright, alright, I'll cooperate, okay I'll learn, okay, he had to wear me out a long time. So I've been taught then do it hard. Now how do you hang in there during the hard difficult times lest you must have faith. You've gotta believe in yourself. You've got to believe in your abilities. You've got to believe in your service, your company, your ideas, unquestionably. You've got to have faith and that faith gives you patience that is not gonna happen as quickly as you want it to happen. A lot of things gonna happen that will catch you off guard and so therefore you've got to deal with, and handle it as it comes and not only that but that faith and patience drives you into action, you've got to keep moving and keep plugging away. In the Far East they have something that's called the Chinese bamboo tree. The Chinese bamboo tree takes five years to grow. They have to water and fertilize the ground where it is every day and it doesn't break through the ground until the fifth year. But once it breaks through the ground within five weeks it grows 90 feet tall. Now the question is, does it grow 90 feet tall in five weeks or five years? The answer is obvious, it grows 90 feet tall in five years because at any time had that person stopped watering and nurturing and fertilizing that tree, that bamboo tree would have died in the ground. And I can see people coming out talking to a guy, out there watering and fertilizing the ground that's not showing anything, hey, what 'ya doing? You've been out here a long time now, and the conversation in the neighborhood is, you're growing a Chinese bamboo tree, that right? Yeah, that's right. Well um, even Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder can see there ain't nothin' showing. You know that's how people are gonna do you, so how long you been working on this? How long have you been working on your dream, and you have nothing to show, this is all you've got to show? People gonna do that to you. And some people ladies and gentlemen they stop because they don't see instant results, it doesn't happen quickly, they stop, oh, no, no, no, no. You gotta keep on watering your dream and when it begin to happen, they stop laughing. They say, look, whoa, look here, it's, look up, hey man, you know, I know you could do it, look, you got a job here. See during those hard times we didn't know how you're gonna make payroll during those times when you fail and things didn't work out, they were nowhere to be found. You know what I discovered, when you're working at your dream somebody said, the harder the better, the sweeter the victory, oh it's sweet to 'ya. It's good to 'ya, why? See when you, when it's hard and there's a struggle see what you become in the process is more important than the dream. That's far more important. The kind of person you become, the character that you build, the courage that you develop, the faith that you're manifesting, oh, it's something that you get up in the morning, you look yourself in the mirror, you're a different kind of person, you walk with a different kind of spirit. People know that you know what life is that you have embraced life, you know it was hard, but you did it hard.

David Flood | Why Love is the Only (Best) Way to Communicate
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David Flood | Why Love is the Only (Best) Way to Communicate

David Flood - Look Inside In this great motivational speech, David Flood recounts a heartwarming tale of how his son’s hockey team taught him a life changing lesson about the power of love and its impact on every beating heart. Transcript: This is your first challenge. I'm going to give you 30 seconds, I want you to turn to someone sitting near you, next to you, okay, look them in the eye, and this is what I want you to say: "When I look at you, I see blank," okay. 30 seconds, go. You're going to look at me and say, "When I look at you, I see blank." Okay. Okay. When I look at you, I see a smart man. Now I go. Alexis, when I look at you, I see me. Where am I looking? I'm looking in their eyes, deeper than that. Where am I looking? Their brain and their heart, we're getting closer. Yes? Where? Their soul, we're getting really close now. Where is your soul? Inside. Inside. That is your first challenge for today, stop looking at people on the outside and say this out loud: Look on the... Inside. Inside. And here's where you use this, it's really hard to look at someone who doesn't look like you and see yourself in them. My children don't look like me, they look like their mom, they look Asian, they look Filipino, they have black hair and brown eyes and Asian skin, they're tan, and they just don't look like me. My son, Justin, he likes Anime, and Justin likes wrestling, WWE. What you need to know about Justin though is that he has autism, and he's awesome. He's kind, he's compassionate, he's caring, but he doesn't understand where he fits in socially. He can't look people in the eye, he doesn't know how to interject himself into a conversation, he doesn't know where he fits in. When Justin was in middle school, he used to come home from school every day and I would ask him, "Hey buddy, where'd you eat lunch today?" And he would say, "Daddy, I ate alone." He still does some days now in high school. Justin looks like all of you guys, and he is just like all you guys. Not here, here. And there's a difference, guys, between being alone and being lonely. No one here is alone, we're all in the physical proximity of people, but there are people sitting in here who are lonely. Lonely is a feeling, lonely is toxic, lonely is dangerous, it leads you to do things that you normally wouldn't do. A lot of times unhealthy things. About five years ago now, Justin learns how to skate, and eight months goes by and he gets invited to play, he wants to play in a rec league team with typical kids, with regularly developing kids. The last game of the season we were losing, it was 8-3, it was about three minutes to go and I'm in the bleachers. There was a face-off, and Kyle takes the puck and he passes it to Justin and Justin skates in, and he takes a soft shot and it goes off the goalie's pad and he gets the rebound and he stuffs it in the goal, and the kids are going crazy. Needless to say, I'm crying, I'm like melting the ice with my tears, and so I went over to the opposing team's bench and I reached out my hand to their coach, because I knew what he had done, and I said thank you. And he looked right at me, he looked right at me and he said, "Don't thank me, thank the boys." They were ten and eleven years old, and all they did was let a kid score a goal. But here's the takeaway: They had no idea how they would affect that kid's father that day. They had no idea that that kid's father would go out and tell that story to over 100,000 kids, and I don't think you're too young to hear that message, and so I say that to you. Your life is not about you, your life is not about you, your life is about all the people around you. Your life is about all the people you can touch, all the people you can impact, all the people you can influence, all the people you love and all the people that love you. That's how you source your life. Live your life like that and watch your life change. It's amazing what happens.

Simon T. Bailey | How to Be the Best Parent
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Simon T. Bailey | How to Be the Best Parent

Simon T. Bailey - Invest in Love Simon T. Bailey’s life was thrown into a tailspin when his daughter muttered these 5 words: “I’ll just come back later”. This is the story of how one daughter made her father question everything. Transcript: Children up until the age of four are operating at the genius level. The same group of children were studied in their early 20s, and only 10% were still operating the the genius, or what I call the, "brilliance level," and in their late 20s, early 30s, only 2% were still operating at the genius or brilliance level. The question you have, like I had, is where did this genius or brilliance go? It didn't go anywhere, but it became buried by a society that says, "Color within the lines, sit down, give it back, you can't do this." By the time a child is 17 years of age, they have heard, "No," 150,000 times, and only, "Yes," 5,000 times. The more you continue to hear what you can't do, where you can't go, and who you can't become, there is a neurological path that is created in the brain that causes individuals to shut down. I have gone through a divorce within the last year, and my two children, Daniel and Madison, they are now my greatest joys. Madison came into my office not too long ago, and she said, "Hey Daddy, what's going on?" I said, "Hey baby girl, how are you?" I was preparing to go on a trip out of town, and I was busy scurrying around. I was not totally focused on her. She says to me, "Daddy, I see you're busy, I'll just come back later." I said, "Okay, baby girl," and I get on the plane later on, and it hit me that I missed a moment for spending that quality time with my baby girl because I was emotionally clueless, and emotionally unavailable, because I was so busy trying to make so much money that my ladder was against the wrong wall. Their mother said to me, "You give everybody the best of you, but you give us the rest of you, and I don't want the leftovers anymore." What I recognized, I was modeling something for Daniel and Madison that you got to go after it, you got to get all this stuff. I had the house, but I lost the home. I had success, but I had no significance. I had power, but I had no purpose, and I had money, but I had no meaning. What I discovered, if I continued to model that behavior for my baby girl, that she would marry a joker like me who ignored her like her dad did. What I recognize is that I had to move from hearing Madison to listening to Madison, because the same letters that spell the word listen spell the word silent. When I have that time with my baby girl, I'm dialing in, "How are you?" And I'm modeling something for her brother as to how he's supposed to treat a woman. Women don't need us to fix anything, they just want to know are we emotionally available and emotionally dialed in to know where they are. When it is time for you to make a U-turn and shift into your brilliance, we will have to come to a place where we're willing to do the work. It's not who you are that holds you back from brilliant success, it's who you think you're not that holds you back. Sometimes we focus on who we think we're not instead of who we are. Now, now, through pain from learning that relationships are more important than money.

Rob Pennington | The Easiest Way to Show You Care
Dating

Rob Pennington | The Easiest Way to Show You Care

Rob Pennington - Show Your Love Author and executive coach Rob Pennington shares how you can show someone you care in the simplest of ways. Transcript: I believe that feeling loved is more important than being right. I think we all agree. Again, we forget in the middle of the argument. In my shower, we have this knob that you pull to turn the water on. Right and left, hot and cold. A little plunger that you push that sends the water either up to the shower or down into the tub. I, like everyone I knew, pulls the plunger, so the water comes up through the shower. I put my hand in, wait until the temperature gets the way. Anybody else do this? And when it gets the way I want, then I get in. My wife, for some other reason, has this experience that when she turns on the water, she expects it to be going down into the tub, so she leans in to put her hand underneath the faucet. Where's the water coming from, after I've used it? From the shower! What does it do? Hits her in the head. How's she feeling? And we get into this argument about who's gonna have the plunger in or out. Haven't you ever had silly arguments that were intense about that? Who's gonna try to control who? Whose right way is the right way? That went on for a long time. Power struggle. And somehow, I don't know why, some time when I was finishing the shower, I thought of what was gonna happen, and I saw myself having the choice of doing something with that plunger to have it go up in the shower or down into the tub. And, I knew very clearly, that if it went down in the tub, how would my wife feel? She'd feel loved. And isn't that the way we want the people we love to feel? We want them to feel loved. And I saw how simple and easy that was, but I had to realize the difference between a requirement and a preference. That you don't go to war over preferences. In fact, when it's not a requirement, by definition, you've agreed to not agree. You've agreed to not have to have it your way. That's what not a requirement means. And so, push the plunger in. And when she comes in, and the water hits her hands, she feels loved. And just to be a little poignant about it, she passed away about four years ago. And, when I take a shower, I am still pushing the plunger in. It makes me feel loved.

Terry Crews | I Wanted to Save My Mother
Family

Terry Crews | I Wanted to Save My Mother

Terry Crews - Speak Up Growing up, Terry Crews did everything he could to protect his mother from his abusive father. He delivers a tearful speech on how to overcome trauma, love yourself and own your story. Transcript: My earliest memory is my father hitting my mother in the face, as hard as he could. And, I remember seeing her on the floor, and then looking at him. This giant of a man, who I thought, "My god, he says he loves her. What is he gonna do to me?" And, all I could think, how I want to protect her. How I want to protect her, and how wrong it was. And, I said, "I gotta be strong, and I gotta get strength so that I can protect her." And, every time he came home, we were scared. We didn't know. I, literally, wet the bed until I was 14 years old, because I didn't know what was gonna happen. I would wake up to glass breaking, sounds, people screaming, and it was a nightmare. We lived a nightmare for years. And, I remember my mother, coming into our room, and saying, "We're leaving. Pack our stuff, we're outta here." And, we would grab everything we had, put it in garbage bags, and we'd tie it up, and we'd wait to go. And, then, she'd come back in, and she'd say, "We can't go. We can't leave. Where am I gonna go?" And, I just remember feeling like, "Let's go anywhere. I don't care. We could be up the street." But, she couldn't do it. And, he went on, terrorizing us. Terrorizing us, forever. And, it was like, what could we do? You have to understand that people in this situation feel entirely hopeless. Hopeless. We were hopeless. So many days I thought, "I'll never be like that. I'll never do that." But, then I picked up a lot of other damaging things that come from that trauma. A lot of other things that had been assimilated into my life. Here I am, as a man, I felt like, "Hey, it's my way or the highway." I remember times with my daughter, Adrielle, when I would yell at her as if she was a 30-year-old man. I constantly apologized, constantly called them and say, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Daddy didn't get it. Daddy missed it." And, that woke me up. It woke me up. It was a catalyst, it changed my life forever. 'Cause here I was, a very successful man. Very successful. But, what you have to realize is that success is the warmest place to hide. It does not matter what you look like. It doesn't matter. Anyone, anywhere can be victimized, and no man, woman, or child should ever put up with being treated as less than a human being, ever. How did we get that far off, when people are looking the other way? When the whole thing is geared where you can't ask for help, or you are gonna lose your job? Or, if you bring it up, how in the world are you gonna afford an attorney in order to fight this case? You need three things in order to come forward with a lot of your damage, and the things that's happened to you. You need distance emotionally, you need distance financially, and you need distance physically. Coming out with your story is probably one of the hardest things ever, and this is one thing I love about what Saving Horizon provides, it's a safe-haven, it's a place to go for services if you need. And, I'm telling you, this is my product. This is more valuable ... I'm promoting movies and TV shows, the whole thing, but I want to talk about this. I want to talk about this, because it's fixable. See? Understand, this is something, that we can be deprogrammed. This is the deal. We have to speak up. You can see it, but you have to show people you are changing through work.

Luminita Saviuc | How to Overcome Even the Most Toxic Relationships
Goalcast Originals

Luminita Saviuc | How to Overcome Even the Most Toxic Relationships

Luminita Saviuc - Rewrite Your Story Luminita Daniela Saviuc, also known as The Purpose Fairy, recounts a haunting story from her childhood and the shift in mentality that helped her find peace by not letting her past define her life. Transcript: We both started crying and shaking, because we knew what was about to happen. We hear our father's angry voice breaking the silence. Who took them? Who took them? There are candy missing. Who took them? My siblings and I were sitting in the middle of our livingroom, watching TV. I looked at my sister. She looked horrified, and I immediately knew it was her. And then, he asked again, who took them? If the person who took them won't answer, you will all get in big trouble. All of you, hear me? I didn't want my sister to get hurt. I knew I could handle my own pain, and I could deal with that suffering, but I would not be able to see her suffer. That moment, I just got up, and I said, I took the candy. The moment I said it was me, he just pulled me by my hair, and started dragging me all the way through the bathroom, and screaming, and shouting, bring me the gasoline, bring me the gasoline, or I'll burn you all. He threw me on the bathroom floor, and started putting paper between my toes, and eventually, lit me on fire. I was crying so loudly, and shaking. I was horrified. I was there, with my body, but it felt like, is this really me, is this really happening? Why would my father do such a thing to me? His body was physically there, but his mind, and his spirit were not there. It felt like the seconds that I was sitting there, on fire, just felt like an eternity to me. I honestly felt like I won't make it alive. And, I passed out. I never really had a childhood, nor did I know how it felt like to live in a happy, healthy environment. For the first twelve years of my life, my father replaced love and nourishment with brutality and violence. And, that's all I remember. I don't remember a moment when I was actually having a beautiful, loving interaction with my father. And, even though the physical abuse stopped when I was 12 years old, because that's when my father died, I somehow continued to abuse myself emotionally and mentally, simply because there were so much pain in my life, and so much past that was carrying into the present moment, and I just didn't know how to heal those wounds. And, how to deal with all that pain. When I was a kid, I was thinking that probably my father was treating me the way he was treating me because there was something wrong with me, because, how can you treat your own child like that? There has to be something wrong. I kind of continued to think that I wasn't a valuable human being, and, I crafted my life based on that belief. And, as a result, I started attracting in my life, all kind of people and experiences, who would prove me that I was right, and I allowed them to kind of make me less or more valuable, based on how they were treating me. Believe it or not, we are so attached to our own pain and our own struggles, that we keep those struggles to keep us away from actually moving forward with our lives. And, I just felt like I couldn't do it anymore. And, I remember waking up one night, and I was sweating, and I started crying, and I realized that I can't do this anymore. I can't live like this anymore. There has to be a better way. And, everything for me changed, the moment I decided to make a commitment to myself, to let go of all the things that were holding me back. To let go of my past, to let go of judgment, of toxicity thinking, to let go of resentment, the need to control people, and the attachment to all that pain. And, in that moment, I just had this realization that, what if my father treated me the way he did, not because I was unworthy, but because there was so much pain accumulating in his life, and because he didn't know to deal with that pain, he started spilling over. The more I kind of opened up to this idea of accepting what happened and looking for the meaning, it was easier for me to actually open the closet, and look at all my skeletons, and, even though it was scary, to kind of give them a hug, because, by doing so, you actually realize that your fears and your worst enemies become your best friends, and they teach you valuable lessons. How people treat you doesn't have to determine how you treat yourself. I wasn't unworthy, and there was nothing wrong with me. And that, if people treated me unkindly, it didn't have anything to do with me. And, if, until that moment, I didn't know any better, and I allowed them to make me feel less valuable, now, it's the moment for me to take responsibility, and to look at all those experiences differently. And, to us, to be treated the way I want to be treated. Nobody will help me, if I don't help myself. And that my salvation will not come from the outside. When you let go of the old, you make room for the new. You are able to tap into something that is so beautiful, and it's so unique. There's a beautiful quote from Buddha that goes like this. No one saves us but ourselves, no one can, no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. The story of your past does not have to equal the story of your life.