DON'T LISTEN TO THEM.

When you feel like giving up, don’t. When you’re thinking about giving up, don’t. When it looks like you're not going to make it, keep going.

When they tell you you can’t, come on, man, who are they? When they tell you you’re not going to make it, don’t believe them, man. Don’t believe them. You got to be relentless. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Stay in it. Stay focused.

Quitting guarantees the failure. Once you quit, it rules out any chance of succeeding. The mere act of waking up every day and putting the next foot in front of the next foot at least keeps you in the game.

But you can choose, in the midst of all of this that’s going on, to be happy. In spite of life’s challenges. See, a lot of us, because of our limited vision of ourselves, a lot of us who begin to focus on problems and enable them to overwhelm us, begin to think that we have no options; we begin to believe that there’s no way out. Well, guess what? There’s always a way. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We have two primary choices in life: we can either accept conditions as they exist or take the responsibility to change them.

See, a lot of people want to exempt themselves from taking responsibility; all they want to do is talk about the problem. Every time you see them, they’ll tell you their story over and over and over again. No, no. You want to take responsibility for your life. I got me here; I can get me out of this. And I’m getting out. I’m not going to be a volunteer victim. I’m unstoppable. This will not get me down.

You’ve got to make those kinds of declarations to yourself.

I have never met anybody who became incredibly successful in any area of their life until they had suffered, sweated, sacrificed, kept their focus, and fought through tears, trials, and tests. And if you have a dream and you commit to it, it will come to pass. You must have patience and engage in consistent action.

We live in a world, ladies and gentlemen, where people want instant gratification. They want it right now. No. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s a system that if you work the system, it works if you work it. But make no mistake about it; it’s hard. And you are the determining factor.

The people who make it in this world look around for the circumstances that they want, and if they can’t find them, they create them. It’s you that must take personal responsibility to make it happen. It’s hard; no, easy is not an option. However, ladies and gentlemen, what you will discover is that it’s worth it.

Write down 5 reasons why it is worth it for you to become a diamond. To experience that level of achievement. What is it that will give you the drive? What is it that will ignite the courage in you to get up and come back again and again and again?

How is it that you would be able? What reasons can tap into that deep-down feeling that goes to your gut—that no matter how many times you get knocked down, you’re coming back?

Listen to me, this is how you do it: first, over 6–7 years ago, with no money, no human resources, no building, no funding, no support, the first thing we did was we dreamed, we wrote the dream down, we rehearsed the dream, we looked at the dream, we talked about the dream, we slept with the dream, we woke up to the dream, we wore the dream, and now boom. It’s our reality.

And for some of you, you stopped dreaming. You dream for a week, and you stop because things around you don’t look good. You dream for a month, and when you get hit in the mouth, you quit and you give up. You dream for a while, and when people tell you you’re crazy, and when people tell you you’re stupid, and when people tell you it can never get done, you stop dreaming and you go back to knowledge.

And I dare you to use your imagination.

I dare you when you’re broke to use your imaginati

on, I dare you when you’re rich to use your imagination, I dare you under every single circumstance, keep dreaming, keep looking at your dream, keep focusing on your dream, keep going after the dream because that’s where true success is.