There is a cost to ambition.
There is always a cost. I know there are many motivational books and speakers who will tell you all you have to do is think positive, build a vision board and you can “have it all”.
I agree, to an extent. I believe that seeing the positive in every situation is a value system that successful people embody. It isn’t something you do, it’s part of who you are, how you’re wired. Every crisis is an opportunity to transform something. Every problem is an opportunity to grow. Every challenge, a building block in your foundation.
I think it’s important to have a vision and to connect with the energy of where you are going and I actually do believe you can have it all.
I think where so many people fail is they don’t understand what is in the gap between where they currently are and what it will take, actually take, to get to the other side where the vision is manifest and they really do “have it all”.
That gap – whether an inch or a mile – is the most important part of success.
That gap is where your insecurities live, it’s where your determination and will are tested, it’s where life will throw you down, chew you up, spit you out and ask you one more time if you still want what you want. It is your journey to becoming the person who can steward the thing it was you said you wanted. You have to become. You have to evolve. And in that gap is where all of the tools, experience, people, conquests, trials and gifts live to build you into that person.
Sacrifice lives there.
If you want to build something, create something, have a vision for your life that will stretch you to the next level. There will be sacrifice.
Anyone who sugar coats it is either selling you a handful of lies or hasn’t actually built anything substantial themselves.
As you start to build forward, as you begin to get traction, sacrifice will start showing up at your dinner table. It will become a constant companion.
There is a trust that has to unfold at this level of the game, a trust that deepens and widens the further in you go.
You’ll have to let go of so much, so much more than you could have ever imagined. Parts of yourself you identified with, people you thought were with you, ways of thinking that no longer define you. It will feel like loss. It will feel lonely. It will feel isolating and there will be constant judgment. Your world will get smaller. It has to.
So why do it? Well, if you’re one of the 3 people that will actually read this blog post and you have to ask why, then you may not be someone who understands a purpose-driven life. Only other crazy, wild, out of the box, norm-busting, purpose-seekers understand why. And words won’t ever define it.
It is a calling. An obsession. A commitment that supersedes any other. And sacrifice, having to constantly be faced with what you have to give up in order to move forward, it keeps you humble.
And in the end, it really isn’t loss. It just feels like it when you’re in it and you haven’t made your way to the other side yet. When you’re in it, you have to risk. You have to choose you, let go and release whatever it is that you have to let go and release and step into the unknown. Even if that thing you have to let go of is something you love, someone you love.
Trust is the bridge of a sacrificial life, a purpose-driven life.
To keep showing up with your knees at the altar.
So many people settle for less. And secretly, I envy them. How I wish sometimes I could be a simpler woman, happy with a simpler life. I wish I didn’t have to push myself to the depths of my own consciousness. It feels so vulnerable and uncomfortable to have to do this. I wish I didn’t have to keep letting go of all these things I love and risking my heart and stepping into the unknown. It is terrifying and I often feel very, very alone.
But I was never built for ordinary. And even when I have played small and tried to pretend I was ok with less, deep in my heart there has always been this call. To go to the depths of my being and push myself to grow my consciousness. A constant commitment to my own growth. It is incessant. And it is unkind of me to the people around me to pretend I am less than that. Because they love an impersonator. When I am not honouring my truth and my heart, I am pretending to be something I am not.
And I spent years trying to cover that up, pretending I was less and thought less and wasn’t as deep as I really am. I have been afraid.
The cost has felt too great. The risk too high. The fear too strong.
Why do I write this silly blog? I constantly question myself, feel my deep vulnerability, love and hate what I am called to do. Fight myself all the time. Because truthfully, I don’t understand why. I have no evidence or agreement for why. No one is standing up to tell me it’s the right thing to do, or to keep going, or that it all makes sense. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And it particularly doesn’t make sense when where it leads me is to more loss, more sacrifice, more letting go.
I am a woman who is somewhere in the gap. Trusting, without certainty. Pushing forward without proof.
But go I must. Who knows why. Who knows where it will lead me. All I know for sure is on the other side is everything that I want. And all those losses, all those sacrifices will have made sense, will have been worth it. And whether in the end I’m viewed as some ridiculous woman who wrote a blog about some pretty out there concepts that didn’t make sense to anyone, well, it really wasn’t about anyone else anyway.
You see, it’s selfish. It’s always been about me. It’s about me and my connection to the Spirit that calls me. And I will continue to listen and go where it leads and risk my heart again and again until the end of my days. Because that is my purpose. That is my calling. That is who I am.
Come what may.
Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.
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