Master Yourself

Hey team. All right, so here we are. I saw this, I guess it is a meme. I saw this thing on Facebook and kind of liked it, and I did not really think deeply about it until just here recently. And so I wanted to share with you my thoughts.

It is a picture of a pawn piece in a chess game, and then there is a shadow. It shows the bishop, the rook, the king, the queen, well, not the king. Well, I guess it does. And the rook shows a shadow of all those. So the light is shining behind it. Probably describing this pretty horribly. Maybe I should just try to show it to you. I do not know if you guys can see this or not. Oh, let us see here. Oh, there we go. There it is. All right. So now you see it.

And it says, “Master yourself.” I started to think about that. And in chess, the pawn, if it makes it across the board, can turn into any piece that you lost. If you really think about it, you can become anything that you want to become, but you have to make it across the board. And you have to get to the other side of usually yourself.

You have to master yourself.

You have to keep moving, you have to keep pressing. And you have to dodge things. You have to avoid getting run over by the bishop or by the knight. Or by the queen or rook. You’ve got to avoid other pawns. You’ve got to hopscotch your way across the board and fight some tough battles to grow into something else.

And I think that all of us can appreciate and understand what that feels like. And maybe today you are feeling like a pawn. Maybe you are feeling like you are constantly dodging everything else that is thrown at you. And all of that pressure and all of that strife and all of that buildup is helping you grow into a person that is greater than yourself today, to become a better version of yourself than you are today.

And for you to do that, you have to keep working. You have to keep fighting. You have to keep growing in knowledge and intellect and being able to handle pressure. Immense amounts of pressure in our lives because life is tough. But it helps you grow, and it helps you get, and it fuels you to get across the board.

And when others get across the board, nobody ever wants to be the pawn.

We all have lost pawns if you have played chess before. If you ever get a pawn on the other side of the board, and it does not happen all that often, either, but when it does, nobody wants to be, nobody says, “Hey, give me a pawn.” Nobody trades a pawn for a pawn.

You always trade it for the queen. Or always trade it for a rook. You always trade it for something else that can move with more advantage on the board. What do you want to be? Do you want to be the king? Or do you want to be the queen? Do you want to be the rook, do you want to be a knight? Do you want to be a bishop? What is it in your life you are trying to advance and grow to?

Set your eyes on that prize and continue to handle the pressure and handle the pain and handle the navigating ins and outs and arounds of life to avoid and master yourself. Once you have mastered yourself, you can become anything you want to be. But you have to master yourself.

That requires discipline. It requires good habits. It requires commitment and consistency, even on the tough days. Those things are going to get you across the board to becoming what you want to become.

But you got to master yourself first.

All right. So I do not know if that worked for you guys. I had a lot of fun on my vacation. Jonathan and I went to this little old city called Nevada City. I think we were in Montana, and maybe Idaho. Anyway, there are these two little cities, and we took a train between them. And they are all set up. And outside the post office, they had a chessboard.

Jonathan and I, I taught him to play chess years ago, and we were playing. He was doing pretty well. I tell you what, for a kid that has not been trained except for by his old man, no formal training, my son is getting pretty good at chess. I almost beat him. We had to go before we finished. I think I was going to beat him, but do not tell him that. End result, maybe he was going to beat me. I do not know. End result.

We had a lot of fun playing chess, but we have to master ourselves. And that is tough. Sometimes that is your biggest enemy, is self. What goes on up here is your biggest enemy.

All right, God bless you guys. Have a wonderful week, and remember, let us be valuable. Nothing less will do. Master yourself this week. Keep working on it. I have faith in you. God bless. Bye. See you.