Pushing Forward

I don't know anyone who doesn't want to be "successful." Literally, everyone I know wants some form of "success." That brought me to the question: if everyone wants success, why is it that there are very few people who are actually successful?

What to Do When Odds Are Set up Against You

I find that many times, before we pursue anything, we immediately look at the odds that are stacked up against us. But what we do wrong is, we put took much focus in the probability of doing what we want to do. So much so, we find that the best way t counter the odds is to come up with a back up plan.

I've noticed that we misinterpret a small chance to be an impossible chance. There is no such thing as a 0% chance that something will happen. There may be a 0.0000000001 percent that you can reach your dreams and goals for success, but as long as there is that slight chance, you must grind as if it's inevitable. Success is on the opposite side of excuses, and the odds is nothing more than an excuse that we all have used.

Honestly, it's not our fault. All of our lives, if we were to utter the thought of becoming something like an actor, football player, NBA player, any thing of such, the answer immediately followed after that is you need to get a back up plan. Which, personally, I think is the worst advice ever. Whatever you do, should be a passion, and if you're passionate, you should go full out for whatever it is. Providing a back-up plan is simply preparing your main plan to fail. There's no faith involved in having a back-up plan, it's literally you saying, "I'm going to do this, and hopefully this part works out."

Having a back-up plan takes time out of you grinding for what you really want to do. You can't go fully 100 percent if you got other priorities to pursue. However, I am not saying quit your job if that's providing your income. That just means it's going to be nights where you might not get enough sleep because you're working on that blog, editing that video, practicing on your footwork. It's going to be days where you're getting up at 4 AM, putting in extra work than you normally would have. Simply doing something that will help you progress closer to your purpose.

The truth is, if you want something that many people don't have (success) you have to do what many people aren't willing to do. I've found that that is the reason why you don't see much successful people. No one is willing to put in the work. In fact, it may be thousands of people who read this article, enjoy it, get hyped by it, yet they will forget about it tomorrow morning and they will go back to doing the same thing they were used to doing.

The question shouldn't be, "Do you want to be successful?" Everyone will say "yes," the question should be "Are you willing to do what it takes to be successful?" And most people will realize that the truthful answer is "No."

The odds may be against you, your parents and teachers may say "make a back-up plan," your friends may think your dreams are stupid, but what are you supposed to do?

First, stop expecting people to understand your dreams. No one is supposed to understand your dream, it's in fact YOUR dream. I've found that we too often rely on other people to understand or agree with our goals. But that doesn't even make sense. We all have our own dreams, and in fact, it sometimes may be best not to tell anyone about your dreams. Grind in secret, because close people's opinions can easily contaminate your drive. Don't allow them to infect your passion, it's your passion.

Secondly, I've found that people confuse purpose with talent. For instance, just because you're good at a sport doesn't mean it's your purpose to play football. The rule of thumb I came up with is, your talent is for you, but your purpose is meant to positively effect others. For example, it's not your purpose to sing, it may be your purpose to sing in order to show people they aren't alone, so they can relate to you, so that can be entertained. It was never your purpose just to sing good.

With that type of thinking, you find rich people who are feeling terrible about their lives, even though they have all this money and everything that they could have possibly imagined. They're depressed because they have mistaken a talent for a purpose, and when it's all said and done, they feel empty. They aren't fulfilling their destiny, so they're constantly trying to chase money and other fame to hopefully fill that void that can only be filled with true purpose and destiny.

You must push forward, past all the negativity, all the odds, and anything that could possibly be holding you back if you want the success that you feel you deserve. It could even be you that's holding yourself back (article on that later), but you have to PUSH FORWARD.