Free Will Has Killed Our Drive In Life And In Business

Not to get too religious on a business-centric website but my belief is God, Muhammad, the Universe, The Higher Power, Dumbledore, whatever you wish to call it, has never made a mistake. Not once. Nobody has ever been designed from the beginning to fail. You were built with seeds designed to grow. The potential is planted in every person, but it has always been up to that person to fertilize it, water it and grow the potential into what they were designed to be. It’s never done for you. It’s not forced upon you. We were given the gift of free will. You are given the right to succeed or fail by your creator. Most people take their gifts, their talents, their ideas and their dreams to the graveyard. As Les Brown said, “the graveyard is the richest place on this earth. It’s where all the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, and the dreams that were never realized live.” All because our potential, our seed, our dreams were shaded from the sun of opportunity and commitment by the shadows of our fears.

How do we let go of what happened or what could have happened and reach for our dreams? We all know what we need to do to save money, lose weight, seek help, learning new skills, confront something, move on, let go and everything else in-between. The pain is only temporary. We all know that. It may last a minute, hour, day week, month or year. But eventually it will go away. But what stops us? Why is it so hard? That darn free will.

It’s the ultimate excuse. I’ll put it off another day. Eh, didn’t want it that bad really. Someone else already did it so there’s no sense in me doing it too. The greatest hater in your life is you. The greatest fear in your life is you. Your greatest negative voice in your life is you. The hardest time for someone is when they are by themselves at night time before they go to sleep and they are living with the thoughts in their own mind. The devil’s best friend is to tell you to take a break. Relax. Try again another time. Don’t worry about it. The devil is not out to overtly throw roadblocks in your way, it’s to make you come to the conclusion yourself that you can’t do something or should stop. A lot of people lose hope too easily. Because in an everyone gets a participation trophy world, we are always looking for someone else to help us when we are struggling. We are relying on others too much. We give excuses for why we can’t do something because of someone else. We can’t possibly be at fault. We can’t possibly be the reason we fail. And because we have free will, we allow ourselves the escape to let go of our goals and dreams and quit. And if you quit? Quitting lasts forever. That pain you felt doing something was temporary. If you do it hard enough, long enough, and consistently enough you would eventually get there. But when you quit? Quitting eventually turns into regret.

When did we decide that we can’t do something? When did we put limitations on ourselves? Everybody wants to be successful. Nobody plans their life to be Mediocre. We have allowed ourselves to just follow the crowd because separating us from the pack exposes us. But our very nature is to be discoverers and to be bold. Starting from Adam and Eve and the apple. We always question the unknown. The what ifs. The dream on the other side. Sometimes the road leads us somewhere we wish we never went. Sometimes we end up someplace amazing. But our very core is to discover.

What are the people, events and circumstances that have shaped you? How do we divorce the story of our past and discover what’s on the other side? Start by this: Imagine your perfect life. Write it down. What is your paradise? What is your perfect day. What goals and dreams do you have? When is the last time you wrote it down and put a voice to those thoughts? Put a commitment behind your dream. If you’re looking for something you never had in life, you need to be willing to do something you’ve never done in life. We have to step outside our comfort zone. By its very nature the comfort zone blocks out our opportunity to grow. It’s the decision that we no longer wish to live our lives with the thought that we could have done something, we just chose not to do it. And that may need to make some major decisions. It takes courage. It takes courage to try something different. If we are the average of the 5 people we surround ourselves with, things might need to change in our surroundings.

Fear will always be a player our entire lives. But we get to make the decision on how big of a player the fear will play in our lives. How can we be bold? Take chances? We need to give ourselves time to succeed. Dreams are realized years after the hard work and dedication started. We all have gifts in life. What are we going to do with them? What seeds have you neglected that you always wished you developed?

You have the right to fail. You were given free will. But in failure comes clarity, in clarity becomes conviction, conviction becomes dedication and dedication eventually leads to success. We have four more months in 2017. I hope everyone tries something in these four months and fails the crap out of it to become successful. Just don’t give up. Don’t quit. The graveyard is already full of people who did.