Overcome

Everyone wishes life was easy.  Everything handed to them on a silver platter.  Sure, that sounds nice, but your true strength, your true value, who you are is defined by the struggles you’ve gone through.  There’s a saying, ‘you will grow through what you go through.’

The most successful people I know are driven by something that happened to them at some point in their past.  They have something to prove.  Something to overcome.  Something that was taken from them early on, and they are fighting tooth and nail to get back on track.  Or have what they were deprived of.  Or change the circumstances they are in for themselves and their loved ones.  They are working for a purpose that is higher than themselves.  And those people are the great ones.  The people who’s names you will remember.  Not the person with the silver spoon.

When you set a goal, make a plan, and execute on that plan to achieve whatever it is you’re looking to achieve, you have to stop once and a while and look around.  Smell the roses.  As Ferris Bueller said, ‘Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’

What you have to realize is the journey is the destination.  The struggles and obstacles you face, are the way.  There is no straight line, smooth path, or highway to get you to where you are going.  You’re going to struggle, be beaten down, and have to fight your way through life in all its glory to wrestle from its grasp all that you want.  But it’s worth the fight.

There will be some times when you think it’s too much to overcome.  When I lost my dad, and my mother shut down, all of a sudden I was forced into becoming someone I wasn’t quite ready to be.  I felt unprepared, and I didn’t have a plan to deal with the loss, and move forward in my life while helping support those around me.  I felt as though I had been knocked to the ground, and was laying there dazed and confused.  But eventually, I did get up, and start moving forward.  Just as you can.  Just start moving forward.  As Martin Luther King Jr. said, if you can’t fly, run.  If you can’t run, walk.  If you can’t walk, crawl but by all means keep moving forward.

Now during this journey, there are going to be moments of hell.  I personally lived through several of them.  And I can tell you, the bias is to think that now I’ve come through all that, it’s going to be smooth sailing from here on out.  But there’s just no way.

Opportunity comes in the hard times.

In 2007, 2008, and 2009 the world entered a financial crisis, and the great recession.  This directly impacted me and my business, where I went from making money, to losing $70,000 a month.  I had to let everyone go except for a woman who was expecting, and I was paying her salary on my credit card just to get her to the government subsidized maternity leave.

Letting everyone go was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my business life.  I felt like a failure, I felt terrible for the impact losing their job would have on their lives, and I didn’t know what to do.

I realized I had to learn how to do business in a new way, and so I did.  I went out and registered 3000 domain names, put up 500 websites, and learned how to get good at online marketing.  That became my new business, and over time the old business came back.  So now I had two businesses generating more income than the first did.  That opportunity would never have happened if I didn’t go through the challenge of the recession.  That opportunity was presented to me, and I took it.

Everything changes.  The seasons, the economy, the world, and as such you’re going to have to change and adapt too.  That’s just life.  And if you have every been on vacation, sitting on a beach, every need taken care of, that’s good for a little while.  But then boredom sets in.  Routine.  And before long, you’re looking for a little adventure.

That’s the best thing about life.  It’s a little adventure.