Somewhere deep inside you know what kind of person you were gonna be, if you want to produce great acorns thinks like an oak, not like an acorn, think like the person you intend to become, like the Christian question what will Jesus do? Ask yourself how would the person I'd like to be do the thing I am about to do.
The acorn has three parts, it's got a stem, a cap, and a seed. and the stem represent it's connection to the pass, all the acorn and all the oak that ever exist in it's line before is encoded through that stem, legacy into this acorn. The cap holds on to the seed, until the seed ready to go on it's own, so the cap represent your coaches, your mentor your roll model your guides your parents your friends your teachers, and when you're ready to grow on your own, the seed of that acorn holds not only your potential but the potential of every future generations of acorns that will spring from that line.
So let me ask you a question, what kind of seed is in you? See I belief part of our responsibility in life is to find out who we are to discover ourselves, first off we need to respect our nature we need to realize we are part of a continuing chain that carry a legacy and responsibility, and if that's the case then we needs to recognize that we were not biological coincidences, I belief there is a great creator, and I belief you were intentionally created for a myriad of purposes, there are many things we can do with our lives, and I thinks it's our job to find out and to do'em as well as we possibly can. We're passing along the right imprint for the next generation, and that's just simply my life philosophy, that's the way I look at it.
So first we need to respect our nature, second, we need to know our nature, take Aristotle advice know thyself, but know things about yourself that most people don't discover, for example, know how you're smart, not just how smart you are in comparison to others, in what ways are you smart, know what you care about, what is the values that motivate your choices, know what's your personal velocity is, the intense or the drive that you naturally operate, know the back ground imprint, positive neutral and negative that you carry with you, and what effect it's had on you, know your behavioral style, how you come across to other people, know the pattern and the choices so that you continuing learn more and more about what it's like to be you so you can do a better job of it, and than we need to apply our nature, we need to nurture our nature by expressing ourselves in the world.
See, I never expected to be anything but ordinary, I was raise to be nice and ordinary, I expected I would grow up to be like dad working for the phone company, I figured I'd go to work in the phone company, maybe work in an office, I figured I'd work till sixty five and have 1.34 kids, I'd retire 65 and then I'd die at statistical average age for my gene pool, that's what I expected, until one day in 1972 on the radio in the next room to mine I heard a voice that changed everything, I was working for the little rock housing authority, Little Rock Arkansas, Little Rock urban renewal agency. I was a government clerk working 525 dollars a month I weight 200 pounds, this is 148, I smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day, I never set a goal in my life, I didn't have a college degree and didn't have money in the bank, I was newly married with a new baby at home and I didn't expect much from life and in the next room I heard the voice of Earl Nightingale, Known at the time as the dean of personal motivation, he was on 900 radio station around the world, what he said that day will forever resonates with me. He say if you will spend one extra hour each day studying your chosen field you'll be a national expert in that field in five years or less, that hit me like a tornado, it rearrange everything in my life. I started doing the math, an hour a day, say five days a week, fifty weeks a year, that's twelve hundred and fifty hour in five year. If I spend, me just ordinary me, twelve hundred and fifty hour studying one subject...Wow! I could actually be a national expert, what I want to be an expert at? Those not urban renewal, and than it occur to me a few weeks later I want to do what that guy on the radio's doing, but I had no idea what that was, I just feel that's right to get into the field of human development, I thought will see, an hour a day, I am a government clerk I've got eight hours a day, I can do this by Thursday, and then I started thinking about what he'd said and I took him seriously, an hour a day, I focus, I thought I was behind the game so I needed two hours a day, and three and four and five... so I over compensated and I become fanatical about the field of human development, and in that five years period I went from being a government clerk with very little aspiration to being a full time speaker and trainer, in two years, that was 1972, in 1974 I started buying Earl Nightingale's training material and selling them to businesses, by 1984 his company was selling my training material world wide, they sold three and a half million dollars worth of one of my first audio, in the first two years it was out, I was blown away, his formula works, and I've seen it for hundred and even thousand of people in the many many years since that time that I've been sharing that massage. Think about that, you, Ted audience, if you were to focus half an hour a day, extra just beyond the Ted talk you always watch, ok beyond that, if you were to focus half an hour of study on one field of endeavor for five consecutive years, you not only transform you, you transform the world around you, and we collectively will transform the world as we know it today. You and I were born with a gift to make this a better place, even if we didn't improve we can make the world better right now, we can encourage people, compliment peoples, we can solve problems, we can pick up trash, we could fix things we could bring new ideas, but as you grow you become a bigger source for the rest of lives to express itself through you, you were put here for a reason, it contain in that acorn, so nurture your nature, figure out first off, I am valuable accept that, I wanna know who I am and I wanna know how I operate, and how can I understand me better, and then I wanna nuture that nature, I wanna apply myself in the world put myself to work in such way that the rest of the world says well that's cool, if he or she could do it, I could probably do it, I wonder how they did it, and then we start spreading that and the ripples go world wide, so ask yourself every day how were the person I'd like to be do the things I am about to do.. Thank you.