*Never permit your grievances to overshadow your opportunities. At your lowest point–that, is when you seek to be that pivotal example of a person tirelessly at work for the betterment of humanity.*
If you’re seeking what I’m writing, I won’t have to beg you to stay.
The greatest secret you will ever come across is to keep going. There’s a vast chasm between me telling you that, and you knowing that in your heart. When you know it, there’s a deep-seated resonation that strikes at you from the inside out. When that spirit of undying resolve settles into you, that, is when you give birth to the fruition of your natural gifts. After you sense it and connect with it, more than a few changes will occur with you and your life at large. In other words, the changes may not come when you expect them, but they do come, particularly, in the most unlikely of ways.
I’ve had enough of being young and dumb. Now I see that old is gold. Often it is in those seemingly inconsequential moments whereby one is struck by degrees of wisdom that somehow elude even the most gifted among us. Elude, until something in our life experience finally compels us to evolve.
In proportion by which you learn to produce what other people want and must have, in that same proportion your life will blossom accordingly. It is by the service that you render for others that you construct the throne commensurate with the outcry of your very soul. It is this outcry which has the power to change every conceivable facet of your existence because the changes always begin within. Your greatness has never been outside of you–only within.
The improvements in your life always start with you first.
Much of what happens to you is immaterial–it is how you react. That, above all, is what counts. You see, when you are alive, you are given power to perform in this life. This power can be used for anything. It can be for good or bad purposes. That power of choice is one of great responsibility and not something to be taken lightly. The problem is, so many of us do just that, and then we wonder why our lives’ are not what we want them to be.
I’ve learned that the energy I expend at the attainment of the comforts of this world is in lockstep to those advances which I devote myself to Heaven itself. The power I use for both ends resides from the same place.
To them that be called, one must first answer that call in order to begin the work that is associated with the purpose. If one does as I did, and attempts to do so without first heeding the call, they will find themselves under the oppressed tumult of a desert without a shadow of shade or an ounce of water of which to drink.
For years I felt I had no voice, so I did not attempt to speak. Now that I’ve found my voice, I’m afraid that there’s no one around to listen. The moral of my grievance is–there will always be something waiting to stop you. There will always be something lingering in the background of your thoughts groping at your dreams, whose only mission is to snuff them out.
You will always have a reason to fail. What you need is a reason to keep going.
It’s not a matter of if, but when. You know your breakthrough is coming. For each day that passes without it, you are one day closer. So, until your times comes, you can’t let a single day go by where you don’t prepare. Before I go further, I want to stop you here for a moment. Often, we talk about it being “our time” or, “our time will come” or “my time will come.” Now I want you to look at it a better way.
Your life, has never been about “my time is coming.” Your life, is about you arriving.
This is not about you waiting for your time or even your arrival. You have to go after your arrival. Your arrival in life does not come looking for you. It is not something that lands on your lap like the sunbeams of the sun at noonday. To arrive, you must prepare. You never know when it’s going to come, but now you know that this: If you don’t prepare yourself, your time will never come. And even if it did, you will fall woefully short, for you are unready.
In this muck and mire of life, it is always so easy to think of ourselves as being so far from our goals. With something so important such as this, the last thing you want is to be unprepared. When you have something in front of you that you’ve been waiting your entire life for, you must capitalize on it then and there, because you don’t know if you’ll ever get that opportunity again. The good news about that last statement is, if you are prepared, you will more than likely capitalize automatically. You won’t have to consciously think it through because your preparation has prepared you to react in a time such as that.
Your time is NOW, but only, if you are ready.
Thing is, unless you prepare, you won’t be ready. It’s never been about the “right time” or the “wrong time.” This is about YOU. Are YOU ready? Have you failed enough? Have you learned to push through your fear? Your finest hours of growth don’t come when things are going your way. Your At Your Best growth is birthed within the hands of failure. You don’t fall short when you fail. You fall short if you fail and don’t learn anything. You fall short when you give up. You fall short and will find yourself in perpetual failure when you stop. You have to keep going.
Where we fall short with preparation is that it comes with its own highs and lows. It’s easy to keep going in life when everything is going your way. It’s easy to be confident when you’re racking up the wins. When you’re winning, the dreams become realities before your very eyes. These victories can feel so good but they don’t matter if you throw yourself overboard when the seas turn rough.
Living to fight another day means next to nothing if you’re living to give up on that same day.
Unfortunately that’s exactly how I used to live. I lost a lot of time in life thinking I was “playing not to lose” when in retrospect I see I was playing myself. My entire work in writing is designed to save you from making the same mistakes I consistently found myself making.
Earlier, I mentioned breakthroughs. Something we all lose sight of from time to time is it is in your lowest moments, where & when, your breakthroughs shine brightest. Think about it… When you’re winning, it’s much harder to see the breakthroughs, because when you’re winning, you’re literally breaking-through. There is a difference between the two that must be distinguished. With the former, you’re at the beginning of your process, whereas with the latter, you are in-process. Now, both of these are very important for obvious reasons, but what is all the more important is recognizing the “when” for each one.
The “when” for your breakthrough will be at your lowest point when you’re ready to through yourself overboard as you’ve always done. But instead of doing so, you do something you’ve never done–you keep going. A certain curiosity mingled with a tinge of fearlessness comes over you that’s as certain as the uncertainty of what’s coming next. But this time, something’s different. This, is your breakthrough. Life is more than winning & losing. You are more than winning & losing. When you are at the bottom, and instead of rolling over and phoning your life in, you stand up and choose to keep going, with whatever else results, you’ve broken-through.
If you can break-through once, you can break-through again, and that my friend, is the biggest breakthrough of them all.
To surpass your current surroundings you have to train the eyes of your hopes to see further than they ever have before. Your hopes have to surpass your fears. Your hopes have to exceed your anxiety. Your hopes have to outrun your doubts. Your hope is your fuel for the fire that keeps you moving. Hope, does not run out on you. Hope, does not run away from you. You, are the hope.
It is YOU. It is not your best friend or your mom or your favorite entertainer or sports team. You are the hope and the primary source of power for it. When it’s just you, and you’re at rock-bottom, it is your hope that will compel the momentum of the breakthrough your soul gives birth to. You’ve always looked down and around about what’s ahead of you, and even what’s behind you. But how often do you stand up and look directly above you? You’d be surprised by what you feel when you do something so few people do–stand up & look up. Sometimes in life, what’s ahead of you isn’t in front of you or even off to the side of you. Sometimes, it’s above you.
The wheels of your future are forever at the mercy of your interventions. Don’t ever forget that. You cannot define your past, but you can lay out and articulate your future. But to do that, you know the one thing you absolutely must do.
–Daniel Cousin
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