“Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become.” – Heraclitus
What you think about and what you do on a daily basis is who you become.
Are you thinking positive thoughts or negative ones?
Are you surrounded by optimistic people who lift others up or people who gossip and only talk about what’s wrong in their life?
Do you walk around with a smile on your face or do you mope around like Eeyore?
You get to choose who you become by controlling your thoughts, words, and actions. You can’t change what you’ve done in the past, but you can make a decision to do better today and, more specifically, start with your next action. Live intentionally and you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish/who you can become.
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” – Muhammad Ali
Do what you need to do now, even if you don’t feel like it, so you can set yourself up for success and reap the rewards later.
Does a farmer plant seeds only when he feels like it? No, because then when he needs to harvest his crop, it won’t be there!
Success takes time, it takes hard work, and it takes consistent action. If you work out once, you’re not going to have six pack abs. If you save money to invest one month, you’re not going to be able to retire off of it. But if you do those things consistently over time, you’ll eventually achieve things that most people aren’t disciplined enough to do.
“Suffer” now. “Sacrifice” now. Live below your means, take care of your mind, body, and spirit now. Do these things consistently and continued take massive actions daily, weekly, and monthly towards your goals, and you will achieve success. Think about your future self, not just about what you feel like doing right now.
Don’t underestimate the value of having a good team!
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” – African proverb
It’s easier to do things by yourself. You can trust that you’ll “do things right.” Training others can be time consuming and stressful, but if you’re not willing to let go of the $10/hour tasks so that you can focus on the $1,000/hour tasks, you will cap your upside. We only have so much time in the day…
It’s perfectly fine to try to do things on your own. But to make the biggest possible impact, you’re going to need a great team around you.
“The journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu
How often do we look at success stories and either become envious of the person who “made it” or think to ourselves, “I could never do that.”
The truth is, we are more capable than we think. Everyone has to start somewhere. Sometimes, our starting lines are staggered, as some people grow up in better/worse environments, with more/less natural abilities, resources, and privileges. But that doesn’t mean that we should give up before we even get started!
Start where you are. Put blinders on. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where you start versus where anyone else starts, it only matters that you start AND that you keep going. Because the situation is what it is. You can’t do anything to change the past – whether it’s your past actions/inactions or your parents’ past actions/inactions. You are where you are and the only thing that can change that is you. You can choose to make your life better or you can make excuses for why you can’t do something.
The key to any great story though, is that the hero of the story got started. It started with a single step. And the best stories – the most compelling ones – aren’t the ones where everything comes easy to the hero. The hero often will have doubts and have to go through trials and tribulations. But the reason we know about these heroes is because they overcame the difficulties they faced and persevered. Whether you think about Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or even Jesus Christ. They all started somewhere. They all had challenges they needed to overcome. But to get to where they needed to be, each of them kept taking the next step.
So take a look at your life. Are you where you want to be? Are you proud of the story you’re writing? We are each the heroes of our own journeys. Refuse to play the victim, the villain, or a passive character. Be the hero! Take the first step and keep on going.
The college/university you go to does not create success. In fact, even knowledge alone does not cause success. It is the application of your knowledge on a consistent basis that creates success. How you obtain that knowledge could be in a classroom, it might be from a book you read, someone you talked with who has done it before, or your own experiences. Just because you go to “higher education” doesn’t mean that you’re actually more educated than those who don’t attend college.
Sometimes, going to university/college is a requirement for specific professions. But for many other professions (I would even argue that maybe for a slight majority), I think classes tailored to a specific group of skills would be better suited to help individuals trying to get into that field. That’s not to say that I think college is bad or that I would take back my experience at all. BUT I do believe that we need to harp on options for young adults. Why go deeply into debt for a degree that may or may not help you?
