You need your dream and your VISION in order to SURVIVE failure. If you are getting ready to make some big moves in your life and you’re not anticipating failure, you’re wearing rose colored glasses. There is a huge difference between being positive and EXPECTING to succeed and simply fantasizing about where you’d like to be or imagining that good fortune is just going to fall out of the sky… Paint the picture so vivid in your mind that you feel the sand between your toes, you smell the clean air, you feel the ocean breeze brush your face, and you feel the warm embrace of the sun. Visualize what it is you desire. See every single aspect of it. Feel it. Create it in your mind and make it so clear that you find yourself putting on your swim trunks in your bedroom.
Next, don’t just stay there. Next, get moving.
What do you have to do? I have no idea! I don’t know what your heart is or what your talents are. Only you know! Begin with this: BE ACCOUNTABLE TO YOURSELF. You know that there are some practices that you should be doing to get your dream moving and if you’re not doing them, you’re not being accountable to yourself. If you’re letting you slack off, you will never get to that dream. And by the way, you don’t DESERVE to get to that dream.
I always teach by example. In this case, for me reading EVERYDAY is what I have to do to get myself where I want to be. I actually suggest this for you as well, no matter what your dream is. But reading is a practice that I MUST DO EVERY SINGLE DAY! I will make sacrifices so that I can get my reading in. I might sacrifice sleep. I might sacrifice hanging out with friends. I might sacrifice relaxing in some way. Reading is that important to me that I am willing to give up things like sleep in order to get this done.
Sometimes I really love what I’m reading and I can get lost in the text for hours that feel like seconds. Other times I feel like I’ve read the same sentence twenty times and can’t get it. But I don’t give up and walk away. If I was only meant to barely get through a sentence that day, I spend the same energy and time reading that one sentence that I do when I’ve read 50 pages of something I just didn’t want to put down. On the good days, I read. On the bad days, I read. Reading is a practice that I fully believe, with burning conviction, is in direct correlation with my dream and my vision. That’s why I said at the beginning, keep your vision to survive failure.
I would have liked to have read at least 30 pages on that day I only read a sentence. I failed. I can let that get to me and dwell on a lie that reading might just not be for me anymore. Maybe I lost my passion for it. Maybe it really isn’t all that important for me to read. Maybe it really isn’t going to contribute that much to my future success… No thanks. Those are thoughts that quickly enter our minds when we fail that we must just as quickly ignore. And if we can’t ignore them and it’s still bothering us the next day, guess what. Read anyway.
Your will to succeed in your dream has to be stronger than the garbage that is polluting your mind. Let me say that again in caps, YOUR WILL TO SUCCEED IN YOUR DREAM HAS TO BE STRONGER THAN THE GARBAGE THAT IS POLLUTING YOUR MIND… I want to drive a Tesla (that is a personal goal for me). I believe reading everyday will help me get there. I could barely read a sentence yesterday. It was like my brain just didn’t want to turn on… All of these things are swirling around my mind while I open the book and start to read. But I still open the book…
There are more practices that I apply this determination to in my daily routine. There are also other goals besides driving a Tesla. But my point is this, allow your dream and the conviction of what you must do to get there be stronger than the failures you will SURELY face.
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