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Chapter 1: What is the importance of starting before you're ready?
I am imperfect, a fraction of the man I hope to be someday. You know what? Here I go, and forward I march. If you thought being real took courage, wait until you hear about the courage required to be imperfect, to start before you're ready. To build without all the tools. To present yourself to the world unpolished, anything but buttoned up.
Pulled, not by guarantee, but by a belief in your heart that something better awaits. I don't really know what prompted it, but I was kind of in my head running an inventory of the last few friends I've talked to on my phone. I'm going to share a few of them. Tom, a recovered addict and now CEO of a multi-million dollar business in OKC.
Chapter 2: How can we learn from the courage of others who have overcome adversity?
Terry, similar beginning, fought through alcoholism, a liver transplant. Years later, owns a very successful marketing organization. Happy relationship. Michael, abusive childhood, now a legend of a human being, firefighter, builder, flipping real estate. Eric, ex-cop, saw things so sad and traumatic that it took him years to get over it.
In many ways, he expresses he still is now one of the most sought-after trainers in the country. Work with a list of clients that would make your head spin. Wesley, who I recently met, battled through cancer, health issues, so much more, and is truly a source of light in this world, building his own inspirational brand now. And I bring these people up not because they battled, and they all did.
I bring them up because sometimes I marvel at the courage to stand back up after being hit that hard and decide to build again.
Chapter 3: What role does self-doubt play in our journey to success?
Here's what I know. You don't climb your way back from addiction and immediately think, you know what, I deserve to be CEO of a multi-million dollar company. Think about the pain, the identity shift, the process of earning your own confidence, the mornings of self-doubt, convincing yourself that you aren't who you were, you're who you choose to be today.
See, we don't talk about those things often. Because let's face it, we don't see them that often. It's behind the scenes. But that, as far as I'm concerned, is courage to its fullest extent. I am imperfect. I am a fraction of the man I hope to someday be.
Chapter 4: Why is it crucial to embrace imperfection in our lives?
But you know what? Here I go. Forward I march. Because the normal human condition is to be so wrapped up in our own battles that we sometimes feel we are the only ones going through it. We forget others dealt with pain. We overlook the fact that many of the people we look up to push through a fog of doubt every morning so thick that they aren't sure what the other end will look like.
Now, there are a couple of ways to take all this. and let's run that thought experiment. Route one, you fixate on the fact that the human condition is suffering. It's inescapable pain and anguish. Or you take route two and you think, despite that truth, look what these people rose to create. Look what so many others made with their quote-unquote unfortunate situation.
And hey, look what I can do with mine. It's funny, I read it so long ago now that I only remember like a handful of ideas from the book. But in Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, I'll never forget the suggestion that the human predicament is we are simultaneously gods and worms. Worms because we are imperfect flesh, flawed, decaying, in many ways lost.
Yet despite these natural animalistic characteristics, we have this beautiful God-like ability to transcend, to walk eyes wide into the abyss, not knowing what awaits, feeling anything but ready and somehow Pushing through the terror. Avoiding the grasp of despair. And then there's the notion that, yeah, it's one thing to survive.
Chapter 5: How can we shift our perspective on life's challenges?
It's another thing altogether to come out on the other side and build something beautiful on the corpse of what could have been your excuse. to dance on the grave of regret as you offer something divine to a world that desperately needs it. It's easy for us to overthink this, right? Especially since on paper, it doesn't really make sense.
Ask a five-year-old, hey, should you go before you're ready? They would almost certainly say no. Is falling good or bad? They would almost certainly say bad. That's sort of intuitive. But these are the truest tests of our courage. Not, can I move forward when I feel good? Are you willing to reinvent yourself when you don't? See, what's inside you can take you to the ends of the earth.
It can unlock any door. It can act as a light in even the darkest of nights. But the requirement, the variable on which all of this depends, is can you push through, not as the hero, but as a work in progress. Imperfect. Can you be imperfect? See, the divine wants to work through you. That's a belief I hold dearly.
Chapter 6: What does it mean to find strength in adversity?
But you have to trust enough to open yourself up to march forward amidst instincts that pull you back. You have to rise beyond an environment that often tries to keep you down. The courage to carry on when you feel beaten down, small, lost, or hurt. It isn't some of the thing. It isn't part of the thing. It is the thing.
And the greater your understanding of that, the more that scale shifts away from the worm. Sometimes I wonder, why? Why does this season of life feel like it's one undesirable outcome after another? What happened to the law of averages? When is the wind? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? Why would I continue going in this direction?
when it feels like that spot on the horizon I've been chasing has eluded me. Why? Why are my results not aligning with my output? It's hard to wake up and do this. It takes all of me to give this much. Sometimes I wonder where is the delayed gratification everyone speaks of? Where's the fruit of my labor, the arm on my shoulder that says this is why it was all worth it?
Why hasn't the payoff shown itself? Why? And why does it seem like every curveball materializes at the worst possible time? Why won't my body cooperate now when I need it most? Why does my mind play with the worst case scenarios? Why does an already challenging path have to be more difficult than it is now? How many ways do I have to feel pain? Why does discomfort follow me around?
Why won't life let me shake this?
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Chapter 7: How can embracing the process of rebuilding lead to personal growth?
Why? Well maybe, just maybe, to show you how strong you are. What you can endure. Because deep down in your soul, you know you are the 1%. Because if you can push through this, you can push through anything. And I don't know why life gives us its lessons when it does. why the world seems to stack it on when we're at our most vulnerable, when the ground beneath us is most unstable.
But if you can find the courage to step back and see this for what it is, if you can hold on to the idea that this is happening for you, you'll come out of this a different person. You don't need to perform a miracle when you're at your lowest. No, the courage, the power, the strength is in showing up. You need to continue forward. Let go of the week, the month, the year.
Sometimes we are tasked with pushing through the moment, the hour, surviving the day. And sometimes there is nothing more courageous than that, nothing more powerful than seeing what it turns into down the road when we look over our shoulders and are grateful we never stopped. So yes, this season might seem like a nonstop barrage of obstacles and misfortune. Why?
Perhaps because it's life allowing you to plant your seed now. So that when spring comes around, you are provided something you've never had before. You arrive at that spot in the horizon you've been aiming at. And yes, the results might not feel like they're aligning with your output. Why?
Perhaps because when the compounding reaches that magical point, that point of statistical significance, and the desirable things happen then as quickly as the difficult ones do now, it'll all make sense. You'll appreciate it, value it, and be equipped to handle it. And yeah, life might seem to be throwing you curveball after curveball. Why?
Perhaps because if you can trudge forward now when your body's tired while navigating the trials and tribulations of life, when you can bring greatness into existence under duress, just imagine what waits around the corner. Imagine how you'll perceive those seemingly impossible obstacles that slow everyone else down.
There'll be nothing more than a cool breeze and a sunny day as you move towards your best self. Look, it's hard to understand when we are in it.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of understanding the difference between control and acceptance?
It's hard to make sense of the dark and the chaos and the hurt, but find a way to remember, no matter how hard it seems, that this life is happening for you and not to you. This is the seed in the palm of your hand that will mean something that matters. So hold on. Hold on to see that seed begin to rise from the ground. Hold on to feel the warmth of the sun. Hold on to the storms of life.
They will be why, when you look back years from now, you'll have gotten from life that which was once merely a dream. Remember what's yours to control and what's not what must be let go. Remember that nothing is so futile as attempting to move the immovable or change the unchangeable.
Remember that your greatest strength is focusing your time, talents, and efforts, exhausting your energy on that which you can control. And sometimes this distinction hurts. But to fail to see it is to shackle oneself to delusion. Right? You can complain about the weather all day, but to complain about it, to focus on it, to be stuck in it is not going to change it.
Your time would be better suited looking at how to adjust yourself to it. And that's what life repeatedly tells us. There's plenty we aren't happy about, plenty we wish we could change. But to stay there in that space is to forfeit your greatness, your strength. Why? Because there is so much you can control, so much you can do. You can always position yourself to succeed.
But that calls for first separating what's yours and what's not. There are people I wish were different. There are situations I prayed were alterable. There are outcomes that are given without my asking. That's just life. And a losing mentality is to fight that. To feel anger or resentment at the people that let you down. Why couldn't they be how I want them to be?
It's to dwell on the situation that occurred despite your wishes. Why couldn't it have just happened my way? It's to refuse to acknowledge the outcomes that have already materialized. Why couldn't it just have evolved differently? All that, as hard as it is to see, is embracing a mentality of victimhood. It's walking down a path that has no desirable destination in store for you.
When you accept the unchangeable, you then become the architect of your reality. Sure, people, places, and outcomes weren't always the best, but now you ask, how can I navigate around it, or better yet, use it to my advantage? It is, to use the famous metaphor, not shaking your fist at the wind, but building sails for your boat. creating a path to take you somewhere new.
So let the energy, the time, and emotion that's wasted on the immovable dissolve. The question worth asking is where do you most want to be and how can you get there? And while those details outside the scope of your control can feel like a bottomless gap in your way, I promise that what's around you is enough to build a bridge over it.
There's enough there for you to find your way, so long as we learn to separate the gap from the bridge, the details from the solutions, when all you see is why you can't go, or how it can't be solved, or how impossible something is. It's not that you are looking at an unfortunate truth, it's that you are looking at the wrong supporting evidence.
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