One of the greatest illusions of success is that there is some easy way. Some fast track, some secret, some get-rich-quick. So many people spend their whole lives trying to look the part. Making it seem like their lives are just champagne and yacht parties and sleeping until noon and that somehow, if you have that, it means you’re successful.
Having things but being empty on the inside – isn’t success. Looking the part, but having a superficial life, disconnected from purpose, isn’t success.
And anyone that has built up an illusion of a life, without a deep sense of purpose and service to something greater than themselves, in my opinion, has wasted a life.
We were not built for easy ways. Ease is one of the greatest inhibitors to growth there is.
Ease will make you lazy, will convince you that you’ve done enough, will wrap you in your own ego so far and so wide that you’ll start to think your superficial, egotistical life is what the real world is. Ease will lull you into complacency and complacency is where dreams go to die.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Welcome discomfort. Have the courage to stand at the fork in the road between the easy way out and the hard road in and choose the hard path. It is the right path.
I have never taken the easy road. I have never taken the complacent path. And although it has been hard, I have had to let go of so much I could almost not bare it, had to step into the unknown again and again and again, keep surrendering, keep searching, keep confronting myself, keep moving forward through sometimes crippling, paralyzing, heart stopping fear, I would not trade any of it for an instant.
It can be lonely. Isolating. Alienating. Holding yourself to a standard that most of our Western society, instant gratification, reality-tv culture doesn’t have the discipline for. All of our media push the easy road, all of our advertisements and supermodels and the engine of commerce that wants to make sure you stay exactly where you are. Stuck in unrealized potential.
Complacency loves company. It seeks out agreement. Groups of friends who enroll each other in their own superficiality. Feeding each other’s ego. Enrolling each other in their story about how acceptable it is to stay exactly where they are. Arrogance is not confidence.
It takes courage.
If I could give a new entrepreneur one gift, one thing that would set them apart, that would catapult them to the next dimension of success, it would be this: there are no easy roads. Every door is marked no exit. It is a pursuit, a commitment, a deepening consciousness. A test. You will confront every monster in your own closet. And you will want to quit, a lot. You’ll say it’s too hard, it’s too long, you can’t do it, you can’t take any more, it’s too tough, you aren’t smart enough, you aren’t good enough and life will kick you down and knock you back and right when you think you’ve taken all you can take, it will hit you again.
It isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was easy, you wouldn’t want it so badly. If you you didn’t have to fight for it, if you didn’t have to earn it, you wouldn’t value it so much. If it was easy, you wouldn’t do everything it took to get it and then give everything it took to keep it and protect it.
If it was easy, there would be no reason to conquer yourself. No reason to push beyond your limits and your boundaries, to make the impossible possible.
Nothing about where you came from, what you didn’t get, who didn’t support you or how you were or weren’t raised matters. Nothing about your history, your story or your education make much of a difference.
The question comes down to whether or not you have the tenacity, the discipline, the fortitude, the commitment, the perseverance, the courage, the leadership, the consciousness, the willingness, the humility and the heart to get up every, single day and start from 0. To work for it, steadily, without falter, with your whole heart and soul in the room. You do not need a PhD, a trust fund, a million dollars, a good family, a proper education or a righteous upbringing to do those things. They are equal opportunity talents that every, single person can access.
Anyone can have a great idea. But not everyone can be a great leader.
There are no easy roads. And your weaknesses will become your greatest strengths. Your adversities your greatest teachers and you will look back and see that every, single thing in your life was designed to push you to be Great, if you are brave enough to stay the course. Life is always bringing you to a place of goodness. Struggle always building you to strength. If you have the right perspective.
Build your character, build your leadership, deepen your consciousness, know your purpose. And stay the course. You will not be defeated, if you just take each day, one breathe at a time, forward, onward. One foot, one step, after another.
Krystine McInnes is Director and CEO 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.
How to Oprah Winfrey - ify My Business Model.... 