You need what is in your life…
The good is earned and to be enjoyed, appreciated, and improved upon.
The bad is to be endured and learned from, grown from.
Regardless of what it is, no matter how unfair it is, you need it.
I heard those words on a podcast as I was driving from Calgary to Vancouver yesterday…
I shut the audio off, and sat and thought about what I’d just heard.
Looking back at my own life, the worst moments were brief, and looking back on them they weren’t really all that bad – not nearly as bad as I thought they were at the time.
They’re not as bad for a few reason…
When we’re in them, we can’t see outside of them – rather, we choose not to, even creating false even-more-negative outcomes that never actually happen.
Second, looking back its the worst moments, the ones filled with sorrow, pain, failure, and darkness, that we grow from the most.
These are the moments where we have to fight to make sense of why they’re happening…
…We have to fight to not get sucked into the darkness or despair and to even improve and win while we’re in their midst.
The dark moments are inevitably when we become tougher, smarter, and wiser.
We know this of our past dark moments, bad moments, horrible moments, and yet when they inevitably come into our lives once again, we see them with the same perspective that we saw those past ones that we’ve now learned from and even grown to appreciate.
As the miles tacked onto the speedometer, I thought about this a little deeper…
It’s rare that a person is where they want to be, I’m not. I have ambition, and where I want to be is a lot ‘greater’ than where I am; however, I know I’ll look back on where I am fondly.
Only in the future will I appreciate where I am now. So why not just appreciate where I am, now?
Victory, success, greatness, whatever you want to call it, just happens.
I’ve seen it happen too many times in my life, and I’ve seen it in my own life.
You work hard, you aim high, but you do what you have to do in the present, and before you know it you have what you once desired.
Life is game-like.
You figure out how to thrive at one plane or level, get to another level, and you have to figure out how to win and thrive at that level.
Keep meeting new people who are at higher levels and you’ll see that they weren’t born that way. They had to figure it out just like you have to figure it out.
Despair, and even worse, pity, is what makes you fail with finality.
It’s about the only thing that can make a man fail fully.
Death, despair, bad luck, a horrible economy, bad politicians, horrible bosses, a bad girlfriend or wife, a bad hand you’ve been dealt, or anything you can think of can’t stop you…
…But self-pity can and will if you allow it to.
If, however, you see the pressure you’re under, the situation you’re in, the bad, the good, the straight up unfair, as things you need in this game of life, you won’t pity yourself, ever.
You’ll learn, grow, evolve, struggle, persist, and eventually win.
Whatever it is, this pandemic, a bad break-up, something truly unfair and unjust, you don’t necessarily deserve it, but you need it to become who you can become…
… Imagine the weight lifted off your shoulders when you stop thinking that something isn’t fair…
When you stop wishing it weren’t so and instead figure out how to grow from it and become better because of it.
In the end, that’s the only real option.
Things happen, good things and bad things, and we can only make the best of them.
Keep getting after it.
Stay strong.
Be Legendary,
Chad Howse
