How To Train Your Mind To Get What You Want — Transcript

I don't know if we talked about it before, but the um, the the chess master.

So, I was really hooked on chess. My father, uh, my father taught me how to play chess.

And he taught me I was probably eight.

And he trained me for four years, and I was 12 the first time I beat him at a game of chess.

And once I beat him, he never played me again.

I loved it and I started training.

Jada got a grandmaster, Maurice Ashley, who's the first black grandmaster.

And she got him to come and teach me for three days.

So, he taught me this thing, he said, 'So listen.'

He says, 'When you look at a chessboard, here's what I want you to do.'

He said, 'In your mind, when you look at a position, put the pieces wherever you want them.'

Pick 'em up and in your mind and put 'em where you want 'em. Where do you wish they were?

Right? And I was like, 'Well, yeah, but it can't go.' He's like, 'That's the trick of your mind.' I used to watch that all the time with people fighting Mike Tyson, they were walking into the ring defeated. They were already defeated.

I think it was Mike's first fight out of jail, he fought a guy, you know, big dude.

Named Pete McNeilly. For Pete McNeilly, this was his shot at everything.

The bell rings and he charges across the ring and throws 10 haymakers at Mike like nobody I had ever seen.

Right? And I'm like, 'Yes! Exactly!'

Take your shot! That's your shot!

He burned everything in the first 60 seconds and then Mike caught him.

If you say in your mind, 'I want this.' Oh no, it can't. You're done.

You're dead. You're you're training yourself to not even be able to imagine what you want.

How can you stop it in your mind? Your mind has to be the wildest, freest place where you have everything you've ever dreamed.

Jaden said a thing. Jaden ran up to me after the jump.

And I'd never seen this look in his eyes. He said, 'Dad, I now understand the difference between me and you.'

You always have one more go.

People get to their limit.

And he said, 'When the helicopter took off, I was at my limit.'

Right? He's like, 'I would have said no, put it down.'

He said, 'But you had one more go.' Your mental and emotional limits are way before your actual limit.

So you always have to keep a stash of one more go.

Your own mind stops you in places that the world is going to move out of your way.

That's why I love the line in Pursuit of Happiness.

Don't ever let somebody tell you.

You can't do something.

Not even me.

People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it.

You want something, go get it.

Period.

Put the pieces wherever you want them.

Don't start by telling yourself what it can't be, what it can't. Let your mind go fully to the impossible dream of where they could be.

Put 'em where you want 'em, and now one move at a time you work backwards to figure out how to get there and it's way easier.

Put the pieces where you want 'em. Right? I'm like, 'That's that is strong, man.'

That is strong.