January 20, 2025 • 18 mins
Les tells us about the power within. Who holds the keys to your success and why.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
You have something special, you havegreatness in you. Hello. This is
Les Brown. Have you ever metsomeone who was just dead set on doing
the wrong thing. I remember ayoung man who came to one of my
speaker trainings and he was very good, and he said, I came because
(00:34):
my mother told me to come.He said, I'm an ex offender.
And his story was he said thatwhen he was in solitary confinement and he'd
been sentenced to ten years in prisonfor selling drugs, he wrote his mother
and said, I don't think Ican do ten years. I'm about to
(00:57):
lose my mind. And she wroteback to him and she said, baby,
Nelson Mandela, he served twenty sixyears in prison to liberate people in
South Africa from apartheid. She said, you can do ten years for imprisoning
(01:21):
people with the drugs that you sold. And she sent him a bunch of
books and among the books that shesent him was my book Live Your Dreams.
And he did his ten years andhe got out and he came to
see me as a saying that Iheard once water seeks its own level.
(01:42):
Boy. He was a great communicator. He was very talented. And years
later I was talking to a ministerin that city, and he said to
me, you know how I foundout about you? And he mentioned this
young guy's name. I said yes. He said, did you know that
(02:07):
he was killed? No? Yes, he went back to dealing drugs.
He didn't have to do that,but it was like he was held bent
on doing the wrong thing. Iremember orchestrating an intervention for a friend of
(02:27):
mine by the name of Lorain,and we went to her brother's house,
who had been on drugs for manyyears, and he told us to get
out. And I'll never forget whatshe told me. As we were going
down the steps and I said,Loreen, I'm so sorryed that I didn't
get a chance to talk to himone on one. And she said something
(02:49):
to me that I will never forget. She said, most people won't participate
and their own rescue. M mostpeople won't participate and their own rescue.
Have you tried to help someone andeverything you did it was not enough?
(03:13):
And then they will have the unmitigatedgold to resent you and become angry with
you when you decide no. Figuredout I'm not going to do this anymore.
I know there are many parents andI'm not the only one I wanted
to make life easier for my childrenthan it was for me. Big mistake.
(03:39):
No. I reminded of a littleboy who was going through the forest
and he saw a cocoon a butterflywas trying to escape, and he watched
it with just childish curiosity as thebutterfly was trying to get out of the
cocoon, and it was struck andstruggling and struggling, and finally it fell
(04:02):
to the ground, and he kneeleddown and they watched it, and then
the butterfly began to flap its wingsand it flew away, and he looked
at it and said, wow.He was so excited. And sometime later,
in another part of the park,he saw another butterfly that was trying
(04:23):
to get out of a cocoon,and naively he decided to help the process.
He had fortunately for himself, hehad a safety pin holding his little
pants up, and he decided touse that safety pin to make a little
slight incision to let the butterfly outof the cocoon so it wouldn't have to
struggle so hard. And when thebutterfly fell to the ground, it flapped
(04:47):
its wings and then it died becausethe struggle itself gave it life. You
know, we I heard the sayingno tests, no testimony. That there
are things in life that we lookat that we think they happen to us,
(05:11):
but literally they happen for us.That they help us to build character,
and to build faith, and tobuild strength, and discover parts of
ourselves that we don't know. Now. A horse, a person who rides
a horse cannot learn good horsemanship byriding a tame horse. You can't fix
(05:32):
lemonade with sugar alone. The heartof the battle, the sweet of the
victory. Life is full of,as Victor Franco would say, unavoidable suffering.
But even in the suffering we discoversome things about ourselves. Even in
(05:53):
the suffering, even in the pain, that introduces us to ourselves. As
as someone once said that adversity introducesa man or woman to themselves. That
as we are going through this experienceright now, who are you? Who
(06:13):
are you being? Look at thepeople around you? How are you showing
up? How are they showing up? This is the time to summon up
the greatness in you. This isthe time to find that place and that
peace, in that presence, inyou that power in you that's greater than
anything that life throws at you.It's it's easy to to be panic,
(06:39):
it's easy to be frightened. It'seasy to lose a lot of sleep and
worrying about what's going to happen next. That's easy to do. But to
have that peace, that peace,it passeth all human understanding. To have
that assurance, that knowing. AsWillie Jolly, who just recorded a song
(07:02):
recently, the great motivational speaker,he wrote a book call a Setback,
as are set up for a comeback, to know that we have comeback power,
that this has not come to stay, it is has come to pass.
And this song, the title ofit is we will get through this.
We will get through this, andthat is so important. We will
(07:27):
get through this having that kind ofmindset in spite of how bad it looks,
judged, not according to appearances,in spite of the devastating impact it's
having on people's lives and businesses thatare being closed, jobs that are being
lost, people are dying. We'vebeen here before. Nineteen eighteen, millions
(07:48):
of people died and we got throughthis, got through it, and there's
a level of defiance that you musthave. There be a fighting spirit.
Paul said, I fought a goodfight that as we look at these things
that are going on right now,life is a fight for territory, for
(08:11):
peace of mind. It's a fightfor territory to keep your health. It's
a fight for territory to save ourchildren. It's a fight for territory to
restore our health. It's a fightfor territory to overcome a so called dismal
diagnosis of your health. It's afight for territory. And once you stop
(08:33):
fighting for what you want, whatyou don't want will automatically take over.
It's a fight for territory. Everythingthat you want, Frederick Douglas said,
and I love to quote him,everything you want will require a fight.
You won't get everything that you fightfor, but everything you get there will
be a fight because there are thepeople who want that as well. And
(08:56):
if it's peace of mind, ifit's a position on a job, or
if it's part of the market ormarket takeaways or taking some product or idea
out into the marketplace, everything you'ddo, it's going to require a fight
(09:18):
first within yourself to say I cando this. There would be two voices.
The one will say no you can't, another one say yes you can,
the other one say no you can't, No, yes you can.
I know I had to do that. I was a fight within myself.
I convinced myself for years I couldn'tdo what I'm doing now. For years
(09:39):
I argued with myself, and finallyI had an experience. We grow from
people and projects. A person hechallenged me in a presentation. I just
knew he didn't know me personally,but I just knew he was talking to
me, and I said, I'mgoing to do les Brown, you want
(10:03):
to do this. I'm not rejectingmyself anymore. I'm not rejecting myself anymore.
And we've all had those moments whenit was like an epiphany that we
just woke up inside ourselves and said, no, we draw the line and
say, I'm going to do somethingdifferent this time with my life. It's
(10:24):
the only life that I have,and I'm going to take charge of it
and I'm going to live it.I'm not going to live it vicariously through
someone else. I'm reminded of ayoung man who became the first clown that
went into hospitals working with kids ona volunteer basis. He was a doctor,
(10:48):
he dropped out of medical school,did not finish. He was a
clown, and he franchised that imagethat he had created because he loved to
make kids laugh. And he toldhis parents, I'm dropping out of med
school. See what are you gonnado. I'm gonna be a clown.
(11:11):
You gotta be kidding me. Allthe money that we've spent, Bozo the
clown, you gotta be kidding me. I took courage, but he loved
to bring laughter to kids, andthen he franchised it. You know,
when you think about your life,you know a lot of people more concerned
(11:35):
about what other people think about themthan what they think about themselves. I
know I allow that to sideline mefor many years. And they weren't paying
my rent, my car note,they weren't doing anything like that for me.
But for some reason I was concernedabout their approval until my thinking was
(12:01):
interrupted by mister Washington, who said, young man, someone's opinion of you
does not have to become your reality. As you think about yourself and your
life and the things you want todo with your life, what is it
you've been putting off that you haveallowed somebody or somebody's to imprison you within
(12:24):
the context of their opinion. Whatis it that that if you gave yourself
permission to ignore them and to livelife on your terms, to do what
you want to do? What isit that you would do with your life
that you're not doing right now?And during this time of reflection, during
(12:50):
this time of rethinking our lives?What path do you need to cove out
for yourself right now? Henry Davidthrows that if a man does not keep
pace with his companions, perhaps he'slistening to the beat of a different drummer.
Let him dance to the music thathe hears high of a measured a
four apart. What will it takefor you to listen to that drum beat
(13:16):
in your heart? What will itrequire? Who is it you have to
be to live life on your terms? I remember I spoke at christ Universal
Church in Chicago, and a ladythere I did not know her at the
time. She was in the balconyand she decided something I said in my
(13:39):
speech about living life on your terms. She left the church and went down
to the Hiatt Hotel and checked inand caught a flight the next morning from
O'Hara Airport and flew to Los Angeles. She left her husband and her five
(14:00):
children, and they didn't see herfor eleven years until her mother passed in
Chicago and she was asked a question, why did you desert your husband and
your children? She said, theywere driving me crazy. I came home
(14:24):
after being diagnosed with breast cancer.I was scheduled to have a double mestectomy,
and someone told me that cancer Acell's gone crazy. They were driving
me crazy. I wanted peace ofmind. Dead mothers don't raise children,
(14:48):
and dead wives don't serve husbands.I decided I wanted to live, and
I left, and I knew theywould be fine. Oh, by the
way, I didn't have to havethe double mastectovy. I remember reading something
once that said, who's the matterwith me? There's a new term in
(15:13):
psychiatry called relational illness, that thereare many people are ill not only because
of what they eat, but becauseof what's eating them. And she was
not living life on her terms.She was giving her life to her husband
and to her children, and sheleft herself out of the equation. And
(15:35):
she got to courage to go.Periods in our lives that we have to
leap and grow our wings on theway down. That you've got to take
a chance on you to find peace, to find love, to get centered,
(15:56):
to go within zeeki first the Kingdomof God and his right aciousness,
and all these things will be addedunto you whatever you desire as you go
within, as you get still,begin to know that life is on your
side. You deserve to live.Most people die at age twenty five and
(16:17):
don't get buried until there are sixtyfive because they don't have the courage to
live life on their terms. Yes, you have something special. You have
greatness in you, and that greatness, that greatness that you have, you
can accomplish more than you can everbegin to imagine that greatness that you have.
(16:41):
The world needs that you were createdon purpose, with the purpose.
You were created by the Creator tocreate that greatness that you have in you.
If you don't bring it out,we will all be deprived that greatness
that you have within you. AsAugmentina would say, you are an unrepeatable
(17:03):
miracle. Yes, your God's miraclechild. Yes, just think about that,
and what are you going to do? What are the choices that you're
going to make. What mark willyou make? Hardsman said it best.
We should be ashamed to die untilwe've made some major contribution to humankind.
(17:27):
What will be your contribution? Livea life of contribution. You have greatness
in you. You can do morethan you can ever begin to imagine.
You don't know enough about yourself tobe a cynic. Give yourself the benefit
of the doubt. Bet on you, bet on you yes, Challenge yourself
(17:48):
to get out of your comfort zoneand reach beyond where you are now and
do something special, make your mark, leave a less I guess see,
you have something special. You havegreatness in you. That's my story and
I'm sticking to it. You arelistening to Less Brown Greatness radio, positive
(18:15):
and motivational content curated by the legendaryLess Brown
You have something special, you havegreatness in you. Hello. This is
Les Brown. Have you ever metsomeone who was just dead set on doing
the wrong thing. I remember ayoung man who came to one of my
speaker trainings and he was very good, and he said, I came because
(00:34):
my mother told me to come.He said, I'm an ex offender.
And his story was he said thatwhen he was in solitary confinement and he'd
been sentenced to ten years in prisonfor selling drugs, he wrote his mother
and said, I don't think Ican do ten years. I'm about to
(00:57):
lose my mind. And she wroteback to him and she said, baby,
Nelson Mandela, he served twenty sixyears in prison to liberate people in
South Africa from apartheid. She said, you can do ten years for imprisoning
(01:21):
people with the drugs that you sold. And she sent him a bunch of
books and among the books that shesent him was my book Live Your Dreams.
And he did his ten years andhe got out and he came to
see me as a saying that Iheard once water seeks its own level.
(01:42):
Boy. He was a great communicator. He was very talented. And years
later I was talking to a ministerin that city, and he said to
me, you know how I foundout about you? And he mentioned this
young guy's name. I said yes. He said, did you know that
(02:07):
he was killed? No? Yes, he went back to dealing drugs.
He didn't have to do that,but it was like he was held bent
on doing the wrong thing. Iremember orchestrating an intervention for a friend of
(02:27):
mine by the name of Lorain,and we went to her brother's house,
who had been on drugs for manyyears, and he told us to get
out. And I'll never forget whatshe told me. As we were going
down the steps and I said,Loreen, I'm so sorryed that I didn't
get a chance to talk to himone on one. And she said something
(02:49):
to me that I will never forget. She said, most people won't participate
and their own rescue. M mostpeople won't participate and their own rescue.
Have you tried to help someone andeverything you did it was not enough?
(03:13):
And then they will have the unmitigatedgold to resent you and become angry with
you when you decide no. Figuredout I'm not going to do this anymore.
I know there are many parents andI'm not the only one I wanted
to make life easier for my childrenthan it was for me. Big mistake.
(03:39):
No. I reminded of a littleboy who was going through the forest
and he saw a cocoon a butterflywas trying to escape, and he watched
it with just childish curiosity as thebutterfly was trying to get out of the
cocoon, and it was struck andstruggling and struggling, and finally it fell
(04:02):
to the ground, and he kneeleddown and they watched it, and then
the butterfly began to flap its wingsand it flew away, and he looked
at it and said, wow.He was so excited. And sometime later,
in another part of the park,he saw another butterfly that was trying
(04:23):
to get out of a cocoon,and naively he decided to help the process.
He had fortunately for himself, hehad a safety pin holding his little
pants up, and he decided touse that safety pin to make a little
slight incision to let the butterfly outof the cocoon so it wouldn't have to
struggle so hard. And when thebutterfly fell to the ground, it flapped
(04:47):
its wings and then it died becausethe struggle itself gave it life. You
know, we I heard the sayingno tests, no testimony. That there
are things in life that we lookat that we think they happen to us,
(05:11):
but literally they happen for us.That they help us to build character,
and to build faith, and tobuild strength, and discover parts of
ourselves that we don't know. Now. A horse, a person who rides
a horse cannot learn good horsemanship byriding a tame horse. You can't fix
(05:32):
lemonade with sugar alone. The heartof the battle, the sweet of the
victory. Life is full of,as Victor Franco would say, unavoidable suffering.
But even in the suffering we discoversome things about ourselves. Even in
(05:53):
the suffering, even in the pain, that introduces us to ourselves. As
as someone once said that adversity introducesa man or woman to themselves. That
as we are going through this experienceright now, who are you? Who
(06:13):
are you being? Look at thepeople around you? How are you showing
up? How are they showing up? This is the time to summon up
the greatness in you. This isthe time to find that place and that
peace, in that presence, inyou that power in you that's greater than
anything that life throws at you.It's it's easy to to be panic,
(06:39):
it's easy to be frightened. It'seasy to lose a lot of sleep and
worrying about what's going to happen next. That's easy to do. But to
have that peace, that peace,it passeth all human understanding. To have
that assurance, that knowing. AsWillie Jolly, who just recorded a song
(07:02):
recently, the great motivational speaker,he wrote a book call a Setback,
as are set up for a comeback, to know that we have comeback power,
that this has not come to stay, it is has come to pass.
And this song, the title ofit is we will get through this.
We will get through this, andthat is so important. We will
(07:27):
get through this having that kind ofmindset in spite of how bad it looks,
judged, not according to appearances,in spite of the devastating impact it's
having on people's lives and businesses thatare being closed, jobs that are being
lost, people are dying. We'vebeen here before. Nineteen eighteen, millions
(07:48):
of people died and we got throughthis, got through it, and there's
a level of defiance that you musthave. There be a fighting spirit.
Paul said, I fought a goodfight that as we look at these things
that are going on right now,life is a fight for territory, for
(08:11):
peace of mind. It's a fightfor territory to keep your health. It's
a fight for territory to save ourchildren. It's a fight for territory to
restore our health. It's a fightfor territory to overcome a so called dismal
diagnosis of your health. It's afight for territory. And once you stop
(08:33):
fighting for what you want, whatyou don't want will automatically take over.
It's a fight for territory. Everythingthat you want, Frederick Douglas said,
and I love to quote him,everything you want will require a fight.
You won't get everything that you fightfor, but everything you get there will
be a fight because there are thepeople who want that as well. And
(08:56):
if it's peace of mind, ifit's a position on a job, or
if it's part of the market ormarket takeaways or taking some product or idea
out into the marketplace, everything you'ddo, it's going to require a fight
(09:18):
first within yourself to say I cando this. There would be two voices.
The one will say no you can't, another one say yes you can,
the other one say no you can't, No, yes you can.
I know I had to do that. I was a fight within myself.
I convinced myself for years I couldn'tdo what I'm doing now. For years
(09:39):
I argued with myself, and finallyI had an experience. We grow from
people and projects. A person hechallenged me in a presentation. I just
knew he didn't know me personally,but I just knew he was talking to
me, and I said, I'mgoing to do les Brown, you want
(10:03):
to do this. I'm not rejectingmyself anymore. I'm not rejecting myself anymore.
And we've all had those moments whenit was like an epiphany that we
just woke up inside ourselves and said, no, we draw the line and
say, I'm going to do somethingdifferent this time with my life. It's
(10:24):
the only life that I have,and I'm going to take charge of it
and I'm going to live it.I'm not going to live it vicariously through
someone else. I'm reminded of ayoung man who became the first clown that
went into hospitals working with kids ona volunteer basis. He was a doctor,
(10:48):
he dropped out of medical school,did not finish. He was a
clown, and he franchised that imagethat he had created because he loved to
make kids laugh. And he toldhis parents, I'm dropping out of med
school. See what are you gonnado. I'm gonna be a clown.
(11:11):
You gotta be kidding me. Allthe money that we've spent, Bozo the
clown, you gotta be kidding me. I took courage, but he loved
to bring laughter to kids, andthen he franchised it. You know,
when you think about your life,you know a lot of people more concerned
(11:35):
about what other people think about themthan what they think about themselves. I
know I allow that to sideline mefor many years. And they weren't paying
my rent, my car note,they weren't doing anything like that for me.
But for some reason I was concernedabout their approval until my thinking was
(12:01):
interrupted by mister Washington, who said, young man, someone's opinion of you
does not have to become your reality. As you think about yourself and your
life and the things you want todo with your life, what is it
you've been putting off that you haveallowed somebody or somebody's to imprison you within
(12:24):
the context of their opinion. Whatis it that that if you gave yourself
permission to ignore them and to livelife on your terms, to do what
you want to do? What isit that you would do with your life
that you're not doing right now?And during this time of reflection, during
(12:50):
this time of rethinking our lives?What path do you need to cove out
for yourself right now? Henry Davidthrows that if a man does not keep
pace with his companions, perhaps he'slistening to the beat of a different drummer.
Let him dance to the music thathe hears high of a measured a
four apart. What will it takefor you to listen to that drum beat
(13:16):
in your heart? What will itrequire? Who is it you have to
be to live life on your terms? I remember I spoke at christ Universal
Church in Chicago, and a ladythere I did not know her at the
time. She was in the balconyand she decided something I said in my
(13:39):
speech about living life on your terms. She left the church and went down
to the Hiatt Hotel and checked inand caught a flight the next morning from
O'Hara Airport and flew to Los Angeles. She left her husband and her five
(14:00):
children, and they didn't see herfor eleven years until her mother passed in
Chicago and she was asked a question, why did you desert your husband and
your children? She said, theywere driving me crazy. I came home
(14:24):
after being diagnosed with breast cancer.I was scheduled to have a double mestectomy,
and someone told me that cancer Acell's gone crazy. They were driving
me crazy. I wanted peace ofmind. Dead mothers don't raise children,
(14:48):
and dead wives don't serve husbands.I decided I wanted to live, and
I left, and I knew theywould be fine. Oh, by the
way, I didn't have to havethe double mastectovy. I remember reading something
once that said, who's the matterwith me? There's a new term in
(15:13):
psychiatry called relational illness, that thereare many people are ill not only because
of what they eat, but becauseof what's eating them. And she was
not living life on her terms.She was giving her life to her husband
and to her children, and sheleft herself out of the equation. And
(15:35):
she got to courage to go.Periods in our lives that we have to
leap and grow our wings on theway down. That you've got to take
a chance on you to find peace, to find love, to get centered,
(15:56):
to go within zeeki first the Kingdomof God and his right aciousness,
and all these things will be addedunto you whatever you desire as you go
within, as you get still,begin to know that life is on your
side. You deserve to live.Most people die at age twenty five and
(16:17):
don't get buried until there are sixtyfive because they don't have the courage to
live life on their terms. Yes, you have something special. You have
greatness in you, and that greatness, that greatness that you have, you
can accomplish more than you can everbegin to imagine that greatness that you have.
(16:41):
The world needs that you were createdon purpose, with the purpose.
You were created by the Creator tocreate that greatness that you have in you.
If you don't bring it out,we will all be deprived that greatness
that you have within you. AsAugmentina would say, you are an unrepeatable
(17:03):
miracle. Yes, your God's miraclechild. Yes, just think about that,
and what are you going to do? What are the choices that you're
going to make. What mark willyou make? Hardsman said it best.
We should be ashamed to die untilwe've made some major contribution to humankind.
(17:27):
What will be your contribution? Livea life of contribution. You have greatness
in you. You can do morethan you can ever begin to imagine.
You don't know enough about yourself tobe a cynic. Give yourself the benefit
of the doubt. Bet on you, bet on you yes, Challenge yourself
(17:48):
to get out of your comfort zoneand reach beyond where you are now and
do something special, make your mark, leave a less I guess see,
you have something special. You havegreatness in you. That's my story and
I'm sticking to it. You arelistening to Less Brown Greatness radio, positive
(18:15):
and motivational content curated by the legendaryLess Brown
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