Khalid Latif – Inspiring Video Learn How to Win at the ONLY Competition that Matters

Some of us just don't think that much.

One night, I left from a meal and

there was a homeless man asking people for

money outside of our center. And I said

to him, I have some sandwiches I could

give to you. And he said, I don't

want your sandwiches.

I walked away thinking that this guy doesn't

want my food,

all he wants is money, He's probably not

even hungry, or he's gonna use the money

on drugs or alcohol or something like that.

And I caught myself in my thoughts.

And I said, the only person who can

answer why he doesn't want my food

is he himself.

And so I walked back to him, and

I was a little annoyed, and I said

to him, why don't you want my food,

man?

And he walked to his shopping cart, he

took out a bag,

and he said, I already have food.

And he said, if I was to take

your food in addition to the food that

I have,

there's no way I would be able to

eat all of it,

and some of it would get thrown away.

And he said, me living the life that

I live,

I will never

throw away food.

I said thank you to him

for not just teaching me something about himself,

but teaching me a lot about myself.

And I walked away with a different recognition

of who it is that

I'm not necessarily today,

but what it is that I really want

to be in the long term.

Society teaches us to look at ourselves a

lot,

just think about how much time you spent

in front of a mirror, how much time

you spent in terms of the care of

your physical, your external, to fit into boxes

that people place you in, that you might

not even know you're in, but you're trying

to fit into somebody else's standard of who

you're supposed to be.

My daughter and I, we go to Dunkin

Donuts a lot. She's 4 and a half

years old.

And if you ever see her, her name

is Medina. She's got this just contagious

energy to her. Real

deep love that people can't help but fall

into.

We're going to Dunkin Donuts one morning, and

we walked in to Dunkin Donuts, and the

poor guy behind counter,

even before any of us said anything,

saw my daughter smiling at him, and he's

just giving her munchkin after munchkin for free,

and she's just taking them 1 by 1

by

1. And after we got our food, and

we left, we're standing on the street, there's

an elderly woman standing next to us, and

a person comes out of Dunkin Donuts who

had just finished whatever he bought,

and threw the wrapping paper on the ground.

The elderly woman

with very clear disgust

just spoke out loud and said, can you

imagine somebody would do that?

My 4 and a half year old looked

at me, and looked at the trash on

the ground, and then looked at the woman,

and said to her, why don't you pick

it up?

I got very uncomfortable,

and I went and picked up the trash

from the ground.

But it

made me really think about things,

where you have people

who are definitely

making the world a much dirtier place.

And then you have people who can even

identify that that's a problem, that you shouldn't

be throwing garbage on the ground,

but there's not that many people who are

actually going out of their way to still

pick it up and make it much cleaner.

And I think where we transition into that

third place,

that says that it's not just enough to

say that something that is not good is

not good.

Because you can say that that's wrong, but

what are you doing that's right?

What are you doing to add something that's

just positive?

I think we get scared sometimes because we

fit into this very formulaic pattern of what

it means to be successful.

Our sense of identity is tied to things

that we possess and things that we own,

and our sense of fulfillment

is based off of things that come from

outside of us rather than inside of us.

Nobody's telling us that we need to be

honest, we need to be compassionate,

we need to be merciful, we need to

be just. We need to be loving. We

need to be generous.

But they're telling us that our sense of

worth is based off of what it is

that we drive and how big of that

thing it must be.

So you'll learn how to be a doctor,

you'll learn how to be a lawyer, you'll

learn how to be an engineer, you'll learn

how to be an artist, an activist, an

academic.

But as you're learning how to be a

worker,

most of us aren't really learning how to

be thinkers.

We're not engaged in spaces where we're understanding

why do we love what we love, or

why do we hate what we hate, or

why do we desire the things that we

desire.

And your story is not your story

when you force yourself to become someone else's

story.

You are where you're coming from,

and you are where it is that you're

going to.

The only person you need to compare yourself

today to is the person you were yesterday,

and if you wanna have a competition with

anybody,

then make it between those 2 people.

You'll find yourself in the space

where the person you are today

is no longer afraid to meet the person

that you can become tomorrow.