RTG Epidode 1

The podcast is called "Rob the Graveyard" and it aims to help listeners achieve their ultimate destiny in life. It asks questions about abandoned dreams and offers a practical roadmap to living an optimal life. The host shares his personal experience of being inspired by a book and realizing the tragedy of untapped talent. He encourages listeners to tap into their own talents and change their family history. The podcast emphasizes the importance of determining one's purpose in life and taking action towards achieving it. It concludes by inviting listeners to join the podcast on a journey towards their ultimate goals. Hello and welcome to the podcast. My name is Terry O'Brien and the title of this podcast is Rob the Graveyard. But before I get into what it means to Rob the Graveyard, I want to begin by asking you a few questions. Is there a dream you have abandoned because of disappointment? Is there something you really, really want but gave up because you've always heard no? Do you feel you are an extraordinary person living an ordinary life? Do you want to change the course of your family history? Do you want to control your destiny and finally be the person you know you can be? If the answer to any of these questions or all of these questions for that matter is yes, then this podcast is specifically for you. We will delve into the reason you're not living your optimal life and offer a practical roadmap to your ultimate destiny. Now when we talk about optimal life, we want to distinguish that from ultimate destiny. See, because your ultimate destiny is achieving your major purpose in life, your final and ultimate goal. That's your major purpose, right? But your optimal life is the process on the way to achieving the ultimate goal. And if you are moving towards that ultimate goal and you see it and you feel it, then you'll be happy. And you will be living and you will live your optimal life as you hit your short and midterm goals until you reach your final destination, your final goal. So let's talk a little bit about what it means to rob the graveyard. Now, for me, it started many, many years ago on a trip to the Bahamas. I went there with a friend on some business. And while I was there, I was introduced to the writings of a pastor, a deceased pastor, may he rest in peace, by the name of Miles Monroe. And he wrote a book entitled Understanding Your Potential. I read that book and I'll tell you to be honest with you. I did not even need to read anything more than the previous of the book because in the previous of the book, it gave me all of what I needed for the rest of my life. And in the previous of the book, this is what he wrote. And I'm paraphrasing. The greatest riches in this world are not in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia or the diamond gold mines of Africa or the uranium mines of Russia. But the greatest riches in this world can be found right in your neighborhoods, buried amongst the rubble and the bodily remains in the cemeteries and graveyards of your neighborhoods are countless dreams that were never realized. Ideas never pursued, goals that were never achieved, paintings that were never painted, books that were never written. What a tragedy. Now, when I read that, it hit me in my head like a ton of bricks because it made me reexamine my life and my history. You see, because it seems as though most or almost all of the talent in this world goes on tap to the graveyard. And I decided at that point in time that I was not going to add my on tap talent to join the already plentiful riches and treasures that exist in the graveyards in terms of talent and unused potential. And hence, that's where the term for me, Robbed the Graveyard, started. That's where it came up. That's where it was derived. Because what I realized is for me to Rob the Graveyard is to maximize my potential and use all of my God-given talent to achieve my ultimate purpose in life and not take my talent with me to the grave. Now, this is contrary to what has happened in my history, in my family history. See, because as I thought about that, I thought about my father and my grandfathers for that matter. You see, I had two grandfathers. One lived until he was 92. The other one lived until he was 74. And my father, unfortunately, he died very young at like 52. But when you add up the years of those three men, the lives that they've lived, the years that they've spent on this earth, that's a total of over 200 years of living. Or should I say existing, right? Because I see living as moving towards your goal, setting the goal in life and really maximizing your potential and living a great life here on this earth. That's what living is. Existing to me is just moving on down the road, just getting up every day and ho-hum, whatever comes up, comes up. That is not living. That is existing. Living is life with a purpose. You see, so when I thought about that, I thought to myself, these three men are here, I want to let you know, I'm not here to criticize my father and grandfather. What I'm saying is that they are amongst the many, many countless people who've added their talent to the grave. See, my father in particular, he was a very, very intelligent man. He was the first person in my family to go to college, graduated with a degree in chemistry. He could have been a doctor, but he didn't pursue that. He spent a lot of time doing a lot of things that were counterproductive. And I'm not here to get into that right now. But he tried at the very least in his life to try to correct that, but it was too late. And of course, he didn't live very long. He did not use his talent. He did not tap into his vast amount of talent, quite frankly. But I want to talk about talent a little bit because sometimes when people think about talent, they think about the talent that's mostly visible, such as sports and entertainment, and in some cases, academic achievement. But talent comes in all kinds of forms. And what I've found is that people tend to look outward for role models. People tend to look at sports figures and actors and actresses and even doctors and lawyers and people on the outside. But you can make a significant difference in your family's life. You can have your family, your kids and grandkids, your progeny looking up to you, having a picture on the wall of you, of a great difference that you've made to your life and your family's life and to change the course of your family history. I call it the watershed in the history of your family tree. That's what can be done. That's what you can do, and you can become the hero. You don't have to be pointing to somebody else out there as a hero for your family. You become the hero. Why not you? You are born with talent. We all are born with talent. It's about how we spend our life. Are we tapping into that talent? Are we using our God-given gifts to achieve great things in life? We don't need to be looking at anyone else out there. So instead of the talent that people think is so visible as being great talent, which it is, there may be some talent inside of you. Maybe you can be the one who finds the cure for cancer. You can find the cure for a significant disease. You can change the course of your family history. You can change your family from being a family that gets up every day and has to go to work to do jobs that they hate doing that makes them sick, right, and tired, and confused, and miserable, and be someone who can change the course of your history so that now your family can live and do the experience of things that they really want to do because you've laid the foundation. You've changed the course of your family history, and that's what it's all about. But first, before you even do that, guess what you've got to do? You've got to determine what is that purpose. You see, a lot of people are born, well, I wouldn't say a lot. Some people are born with a natural ability to know what they want very early. Maybe they see something on TV. I heard a guy recently said he saw somebody on his father took him to a basketball game. I think it was Shaquille O'Neal, actually, we call it, you know, we refer to him as Shaq, right? He goes by Shaq. He said that when his stepfather took him to a basketball game, I think watching Dr. J from the Philadelphia 76ers, when he saw Dr. J come on the court and he roused the ball and he did one of his super slams, he said when he heard the crowd go wild, he knew at that moment that that is what he wanted. He said he wanted to hear people calling his name like that. So he knew right then that's what he wanted to do. And he said when he saw that, he changed his life. He stopped being a troubled kid to being someone focused on achieving a major purpose in life. Now, that's an example of somebody who has sports, a basketball talent, right? And I use him because he's well known. But there are many people who see things in their life. For example, people see other members of their family or friends or people they don't even know helping someone and decide, you know what, I want to grow and help people. I want to help people to get homes. I want to help people to get well from being sick. I want to become a doctor. I want to become a lawyer to help the disadvantaged people who are being incarcerated unfairly. There's so many different ways we can help people. Maybe I want to write books. Maybe I want to teach kids in the lesser fortunate communities. There's so many different ways you can do things to change people's lives, even if it's not even in your own family, because of a talent you have inside to teach, to draw, to lead. There are many different ways. Maybe you want to become a politician and change the way our country is being led astray by so many unconscionable politicians. I mean, there's so many different ways. We can talk all day about that. But the key thing is this, you have to decide what your purpose in life is. See, I'm not convinced that people are born with a destiny. You know, I've heard many times people say, well, this guy was born to be that, or this lady was born to be this. Not true. All of us are born with a talent. The question is, did you develop that talent? Do you exercise that talent? Think about it, because I can tell you numerous people I know personally that were athletes with superior athletic potential. But you know what did they have? Did they have the character? Did they have the discipline? Did they have the guidance? Did they have the guts in some cases to pursue their talent? So were they born destined to be basketball, football, baseball, track athletes? They were born with the talent. But you're not born destined, you're just born with the talent. Because there are many people out there who could probably have been better than, let's say, Michael Jordan, and maybe Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neal, all these top players that we know. There are probably many more players there who were more talented than they were. Maybe if Shaquille O'Neal didn't go to that Philadelphia 76ers game and saw Dr. J, maybe he would have continued to be a troubled kid and never amounted to be anything special in his life. Sometimes it just takes a moment. But at the end of the day, we all have the talent. We just have to recognize it and tap into it. So let's talk about the purpose for the average ordinary person like you and I, who are not blessed with any extraordinary talent of being 6'6 or 7' tall or what have you. Or maybe just a very, very smart person who is naturally talented to be a doctor if you want to pursue it. Just think about the average person because this particular podcast is designed and geared towards the average ordinary person who wants to do something extraordinary because it's all within us. Just remember that you don't have to be visibly talented. It could be something that's inside of you that no one else is seeing, but you are feeling it. So there's a way that I came up with a few years ago to help me to figure out what my purpose in life was because many of us are not lucky enough to see an event or to know from a very early age that that, whatever it is in life we want to do, that that is what we want to do. It takes years and years sometimes. I didn't figure out what I wanted to do until I was in my 30s. And this book I was speaking about by Bob Moreau, Understanding Your Potential, that was just the beginning for me. But at that point in time, I knew I wanted to do something different. I knew I wanted to change my family history. I knew I wanted to do something special for my children, my grandchildren because I didn't want to leave my kids, especially my sons, in the situation that my grandfathers and my father left me in. And that is a situation with nothing. That's all they left me. Again, I'm not criticizing them, I'm just pointing out a fact and showing how that motivated me to make a difference to my own kids life so they can start with a better foundation. Okay, that's what I aim for when I think about my grandchildren. I don't even think just about money. I think about a number of things. Okay, I want my kids to be left with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, health and wealth. I want all that stuff for them. And my goal is to help them to achieve each and every one of those things. It's not just about money. So let's get back into this purpose because it's important to understand that because everything starts with your purpose or your main goal in life. And if you haven't decided what it is yet, like I was burdened with not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, I knew why I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to leave a history, change my family history. But how was I going to do it? What was the deal? So this is how I started it. And this is how you can do it. Now, it's kind of a morbid thing, but I want you to think about it just from a practical perspective. I want you to imagine that you were dead. And you were looking back at your life. Let's say you were sitting on the right hand of the Almighty God. And you were talking to him and you were looking back at what you did. What is the one main thing that you would have wanted to have accomplished? Or if you were sitting down watching your own funeral and your son or daughter or your spouse was eulogizing you, what would you want that person to be saying about you? If you can come up with that, if you know the answer to that, then you know what your purpose and your main goal in life is. Because whatever it is that you want these people to say about you, or the one thing you were looking back for the right hand of God, say, I've done it. Whatever that it is, that's your major purpose in life. And guess what else? That's what you should be working on right now. Because if you are not working on it right now, you are wasting your time, relatively speaking. Because you or I don't know what tomorrow holds. You don't know what's going to happen next week or next year. You may think you've got time, but none of us know what time we have. I don't care if you're 13 or 30 or 60 or 90. We don't know how much time we have left. We don't have that kind of crystal ball. So whatever it is that you want to do in life, whatever your main purpose is, you need to be working on that right now. I'm not talking about tomorrow. I'm talking about right now when you finish listening to this podcast. Get up, sit down, stand up, whatever you want to do, but think about what is it that you want and what is your next move to start working on your ultimate purpose in life right now. Whatever that is. And that is how you figure out what is your ultimate destiny. What do you want? What do you want to leave behind for your progeny? Now if you're the kind of person who won't leave anything behind, then again, this is not for you. But if it's something you want to do special, you can do it and you have to start now. This podcast is specifically designed for people who have frustrations in life, don't know how to get to where they're trying to get to, don't even know where they're trying to get to. Because you know what? If you have a destination that you want to arrive at, you want to first know where it is, right? You can't hit a target that you do not have, according to Zig Ziglar. You've got to have a target. You have to have a destination. And once you have a destination, you can set a path. You can set a roadmap, like I discussed earlier in the podcast. You can set a roadmap for what you want to do. And that is what this podcast is designed to help you have practical steps that you can take to get to your ultimate goal in life. That's what it's all about. So I want you to remember this. To rob the graveyard is to maximize your potential and to use all of your God given talent to achieve your ultimate purpose in life and not take your talent with you to the grave. We're going to end today's first podcast episode. We'll be here every Monday with a new episode for the podcast. Hopefully it will help you to move towards your ultimate purpose in life. I help you to change your family history. We'll be available on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, all the major platforms for podcasts. And hopefully it will be the beginning of a fantastic journey for you. I will see you in episode two.