Today, I'm taking a quick moment to look around me and reflect on the past couple weeks. I haven't achieved anything of great importance, but I've been taking steps to make my life more complete and more fulfilling, day by day. I don't say this to gloat or brag, but to celebrate the wins over the last couple days and weeks that have allowed me to feel a small sense of accomplishment. By taking the time and intention to write every day, even if it's just a small thing, I feel like I've started to align my priorities in a fashion suitable to the many goals that I have set out to accomplish.
Although it sometimes adds stress to my relationships, at this point, I know that everything I'm doing now, will inevitably begin to remove certain elements of that stress from my life and begin to replace that stress with jubilation, due to an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and a drive and desire to do more. Yes, those are big statements, but I stand by them and if you'd like to hold me to the test on them, feel free. I'll be over here, living my life, planting one foot in front on the other and taking the steps I need to in order to live the life I want to live.
That, in some ways might seem almost antagonistic, but it's simply my straight forward expression of intent and promise to myself to never surrender to what Steven Pressfield labeled resistance. Although I may fail in a moment, it as a battle by battle occasion, which wages war on our ability to own our own determination to forge boldly forward on any path of greater meaning than an average and passive existence. If my determination and resolve to do what I need to in order to be the best version of myself is not strong enough, I will fall victim to the life that is chosen for me by the actions of others, and I will never be satisfied living a life of persistent placation. A passive existence will yield the results of a vacuum, sucking the air out of my lungs while draining the essence of joy and the very spark of life and vitality from my soul.
Yes, this is the time to live, and I feel as if, every day that I'm alive, I am making headway to the life that will fulfill that spark in my heart and soul. Even at this point on my journey, in the thick of some of the toughest brush to get through, I'm finding joy in the drudgery and in the sometimes demoralizing defeats. Learning to get up from those defeats, is a key when waging war on something so deeply rooted as the kernel of our operating systems that define the values we place on the expenditures of our resources- of our energy and our time, of our very existence.
There is a certain kind of comfort in knowing that comfort no longer lives in you, in a certain time and space, if for just one reason:
In a time of great discomfort, there is no room for retreat in war. There is live or die, and I choose to live.
If you're reading this and doubting yourself, or you think I'm full of shit or pumping up my own tires, maybe you're right. Maybe you don't have it in you. Maybe I'm just talking a big game with no follow through. The only way either one of us can truly know, is if we're willing to test your theory. The only way to know is to leave everything you have on the field every single day and be willing to take the journey all the way to the finish line. Otherwise, we're not incompetent or unable, we're just quitters and whiners unwilling to pay the price to make it to the finish line. Winners readjust their strategy to meet the demand, losers whine about the challenges that they refused to overcome.
I don't want to leave with you feeling demoralized by what seems like an overwhelming obstacle, so I'll leave you with this thought:
"Whether you think you can or your can't, you're right." Henry Ford
I think old Henry Ford had a bit of a point here. We are the first and last critic and cheerleader. We can either be on our own team or we can choose to be on the team of anyone or anything that would undermine our ability to reach our greatest potential. The greatest war we wage each day is fought on the battlefield in the six inches between our ears. We are the general, the soldier and the commander and chief. Choose your battle cry and your marching orders well.
