Mark Twain, the American humorist, and author said, “The two most important days of our lives are the day we are born and the day we figure out why.”
There is a reason you were born, and that reason involves finding and living your purpose. We are all destined to live an uncommon and extraordinary life, and that has nothing to do with what career we pursue, how much money we make, or what kind of car we drive. We are not all born with the same gifts and talents. Nonetheless, we all have the ability to become the best person we are capable of becoming.
The problem is that most people take an unintentional approach to living. And by living a casual life, their dreams, their goals, and their ambitions become a casualty of that unplanned lifestyle.
The only way to find your purpose is to search it out. To try things that make you uncomfortable, to fight against the status quo, to experience things that scare you.
Finding your purpose is important because it is the reason you were born. And the only way to discover that reason is to be open to it and search for it with your heart.
However, there is an impediment to finding and living your purpose. And that obstacle is you. Our brains are hard-wired to avoid pain and discomfort and seek pleasure. To our minds, the status quo is comfortable and familiar and should be left alone.
But the only way we can improve, the only way we can grow, the only way we can get better, is if we step outside our comfort zone.
We are all going to experience pain in our lives. Pain is inevitable. Suffering, on the other hand, is optional. Suffering is what we do with that pain. Do we use it to make us a stronger and more determined individual? Or, do we wallow in it and feel sorry for ourselves and want others to feel sorry for us?
To make yourself more resilient to pain, you should do one thing every day that makes you uncomfortable, that scares you, or that is potentially embarrassing. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but if you do those small items every day, when the big disasters hit us in our lives, you’ll be much more resilient to handle the pain and difficulty when it presents itself.
Unfortunately, most people will never get to where they want to be in life because they won’t stop whining and complaining about where they’re at. Very few people take responsibility for their own success and happiness.
We don’t like to live in an uncomfortable state, but that is the only place where real growth can occur.
The only way we can grow; the only way we can push past our comfort zones is to do what we find unpleasant and undesirable. It’s in those painful, difficult, and sometimes embarrassing moments that real growth can occur. And when improvement happens, that is when the common can become uncommon, and the ordinary can become extraordinary.
Regrettably, the reason we hold ourselves back has everything to do with what is going on in our minds. But we constantly look to place blame on things external for our lack of success. We want to blame our parents, or our boss, or our status in life. Most people never take responsibility for their own success or happiness.
We are our biggest impediment to success. But what does success look like? Success is the hard, painful, ugly work that nobody sees or appreciates.
Success is spending hours in a hot, humid gymnasium, shooting thousands of shots a day with a basketball so that one day, down the road, you might have the opportunity to make that game-winning shot.
Success is spending hours every day in the library, the classroom, the lab, week after week, month after month, year after year before you might get the opportunity to perform that life-saving surgery.
Success is working hours and hours of overtime, in many instances, to the detriment of your family or your health, for months and years before you might have the opportunity to sit in that corner office and lead your company.
Success is the work done behind the scenes that makes the competition easier. And the vast majority of people aren’t willing to put in that amount of time for a potential unknown outcome.
The San Francisco 49ers hall of fame football receiver Jerry Rice used to say: “Today I will do what others won’t so that tomorrow I can do what others can’t.”
If you want to be successful in life, YOU can’t be the reason that prevents your achievement. You have to be willing to do the things necessary to become great with the realization that success may never materialize for you.
But if you have even a small amount of grit to pursue your goals, you will be so much farther ahead than the vast majority of people who never start to chase their dreams. You will have a better chance of reaching your goals because there will be so little competition in front of you.
So, get out of your way and do the hard, difficult, and challenging things you know you need to do to become successful and live your uncommon and extraordinary life.
This article was written by Terry Tucker. You can find Terry at:
https://www.motivationalcheck.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-tucker-9b5605179/
Terry is the author of the book Sustainable Excellence which can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GLGVTVS