"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. " Albert Einstein once observed that the most fundamental and major decision that you have to make in your life is this: Do I live in a friendly or a hostile universe? Which is it?
Is it a universe that is filled with hostility and anger, with people wanting to hate each other and people wanting to kill each other? Is that what you see? Because when you see the world that way, that's exactly what you will create for yourself in your life.
This is from great scientific minds, and the interesting thing is that this is not just a clever play on words—that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. I'd like you to imagine the following scene: You're in your house, you've got your car keys in your hand, the lights go out—power failure. You can't see a thing.
You stumble around in your living room, and you drop your keys. You look around for a moment and you realize that you're never going to find them in the dark. But you look outside and you notice that the street lights are on, so in your mind a light bulb goes off: Hmm, I'm not going to sit around here in the dark and grope around looking for my keys when there's a light on outside.
I'm going to go out here under the street light, and I'm going to look for my keys. Why are you laughing? This makes a lot of sense!
So you're out here, groping around and looking for your keys, and you're looking and looking. Your neighbor comes along and says, "What happened? " "Well, um, I dropped my keys.
" "Oh, I'll help you look for it. " And the two of us are now down here looking for our keys. Finally, he says to me, "Excuse me, but where did you drop your keys?
" "Well, um, I dropped them in the house. " He said, "You mean to tell me that you dropped your keys in the house and you're looking for them out here in the street? That doesn't make any sense.
" And I said, "Well, it doesn't make any sense to grope around in the dark when there's light out here. " Now you laugh and you think how silly that is, but isn't that exactly what we do when we have a problem, a difficulty, a struggle that is located inside, and we're looking for the solution outside, some place outside of ourselves? It would be like going to the doctor and telling him all of your symptoms, and the doctor says, "Oh boy, you've got a lot of symptoms," and he starts writing out prescriptions.
"You need a prescription for this symptom, you need a prescription for that symptom," and finally he gets to four or five, and you go to walk out and you say, "Well, I'd like my prescriptions. " He said, "No, no, no. I'll give this one to your mother-in-law, and I'll give this one to your neighbor, and I'll give this one to your daughter, and I'll give this one to your father.
" I mean, you're the one with the struggles and the difficulties, expecting somebody else to change or something outside of you to get better in order for you to make your life work is something you have to really take a hard look at. It's in here. This is a very difficult principle for many people to get, but one that I believe very strongly.
[Music] I was in a group one time of drug addicts and alcoholics, and the sign on the wall said: "There are no justified resentments in this group. " What I said to that group that night was: No matter what anybody says to you here, no matter what kind of anger comes directed towards you, no matter how much hate you may encounter showing up in your life, there are no justified resentments. Meaning that if you carry around resentment inside of you about anything or about anyone—and I'm talking about the person that you lent money to and hasn't paid you back, I'm talking about the person in your life that you feel was abusive in your life, I'm talking about the person who walked out on you and left you for somebody else, I'm talking about all of the things that you have justified in your heart and in your life that you have the right to be resentful about—I'm suggesting to you that those resentments will always end up harming you and creating in you a sense of despair.
No one ever dies from a snake bite. A snake bite will never kill you; you cannot be unbitten. Once you're bitten, you're bitten.
But it's the venom that continues to pour through your system after the bite that will end up destroying you. There are many ways to get the things that we want for ourselves in our lives, but basically, it all begins with how we choose to think. As you think, so shall you be—seven little words that I think are perhaps the most important things that we can learn and master in our lives.
This old proverb notion that I become what I think about all day long—and once you know that what you think about is what expands, you start getting real careful about what you think about. You don't allow your thoughts to be on anything that you don't want or that you wouldn't want to have manifest or show up for you in your life. Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.
One of the central principles of my life is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist about anything, and that each and every. . .
One of us, when we close our mind to what is possible for us, or what is possible for humanity, closes off the genius that resides and lives in each and every one of us. Having an open mind doesn't necessarily mean finding fault with all of the things that you've been taught by others; it means opening yourself up to the potentiality and the possibility that anything and everything is possible. So, having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing really means finding within ourselves the ability to get rid of a trait that I find so common in the contemporary world.
Do you know that most people that I meet spend their lives looking for occasions to be offended? They actually are out there hoping that they can find some reason to be offended, and there's no shortage of reasons. They're out there everywhere—the way this person dressed, what the worst person said, they turn on the TV, they hear the news, they're offended by this.
Someone used language that they didn't like; someone doesn't share the same customs as you. People all day long—in fact, if you keep track tomorrow, you will find probably a hundred reasons that you can go around being offended. But a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing is a mind that says, "I'm never looking for anything to be offended by," and that whatever anybody else out there has to say, my response to that is, "That's an interesting point of view; I've never considered that before.
" The next principle I call "Don't die with your music still in you. " And who better to quote than Thoreau when he talked about how some of us hear a different drummer, and we must march to the music that we hear? But all of you—all of you—have some music playing, and all of you have a heroic mission.
There's no accident in this universe; we all show up here with a purpose. There's an intelligence that is a part of everything and everyone, and all of us are connected to it. Too many of us are afraid to listen to that music and march to it.
You out there, I know you have a book you wanted to write. I know there's a composition you wanted to compose. I know there's a song you want to sing.
Somewhere, maybe you want to raise horses out in Montana, or maybe you want to open up an ice cream shop on Cape Cod. Who knows what it may be? Maybe you just want to travel and see the world.
Maybe you want to go into a relationship with someone, but you've been afraid to, even though your heart says it's the right thing to do. All of us feel something, and in Leo Tolstoy's famous novel, *The Death of Ivan Ilitch*, he asks this question that would be terrifying to me. He says, as he has his accountant from Moscow lying on his deathbed contemplating the horror of this question: "What if my whole life has been wrong?
" I've known what my music is; it's playing right now as I stand here in front of you with these cameras and in this place. As I sit down and write my books and tell the world what I know are my truths, I feel always completely on purpose and fulfilled. At no time will I ever come to the end of my life and say, "What if my whole life has been wrong?
" Whoever you are, whatever that music is, however distant it may sound, however strange, however weird others may interpret it to be—don't get to the end of your life and know that you're going to leave and not have played yet. Don't die with your music still in you.
