Looking for A Sign to Not Give Up? This is It.
Value yourself enough to put in the work and stay the course
No matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve been through, you matter, and the world needs you. You need you. We need you. I need you.
Read this and let it sink in
“ The wealthiest places in the world are not gold mines, oil fields, diamond mines or banks. The wealthiest place is the cemetery.
There lie companies that were never started, masterpieces that were never painted…
In the cemetery, there is buried the greatest treasure of untapped potential.
There is a treasure within you that must come out. Don’t go to the grave with your treasure still within YOU.”
~ Myles Munroe
For emphasis:
There is a treasure within you that must come out. Don’t go to the grave with your treasure still within YOU.”
Meaning: don’t rob the world of you.
Before you read on, let’s do some light ‘mind’keeping to clear some cobwebs and roadblocks.
Because I want you to read this piece with an open mind so that you can get the best out of it.
Start here: ‘Mind’keeping Key 1
You have to believe this: You matter and you have something valuable to offer the world.
You deserve to give yourself the chance to live a life that inspires you. A fulfilled life, filled with Joy (not happiness, Joy).
A lot of people won’t follow through in life because: 1. They don’t believe they have any value to add 2. They don’t value themselves enough
When you read that, there’s a tendency to say “Nah, I am not special”. Well, newsflash, no one is special. But you are unique in the value that you bring to the world.
Read this slowly: ‘Mind’keeping Key 2
Humans — you included — are creatures of comfort. You’ll do pretty much anything to avoid pain. You’ll try to avoid pain, more than you would try to move towards pleasure.
Even when you believe you have value and that you matter, a lot of people still won’t act.
WHY?
Because you’ve become addicted to microwave solutions and fleeting pleasures. You want it now. Anything that will take considerable time and effort is perceived as more painful than just staying where you are.
Time to burst that bubble: If you do not get off your backside and put in the work to develop your skills, polish your treasure, fine-tune your voice, grow and evolve, you are heading down a path of misery.
A path that in the long run will be more painful than any actions you can take right now towards realizing your full potential.
In simple words, going through the process may seem more painful than staying stuck right where you are, but in reality, staying right where you are, seeing the world the same way, is more painful and it won’t get any better.
As you grow and advance in age it will progressively become more and more painful.
Value yourself enough to avoid that pain.
The pain that is inevitable when you stay committed to living a less-than life. A life that’s less than what you are capable of.
I am not trying to motivate you
You can’t get far on motivation alone. Motivation gives you a high that doesn’t last. What then?
Remember those new year's resolutions you had at some point in your life?
Yes, those that you were so motivated and pumped to slay on January 1, but quickly fizzled out by February 1?
That’s because no one can stay motivated all the time. Motivation is based on emotions and feelings which change all the time.
You must base the success of your life on something more stable.
Here’s how to stay the course, even on days when you don’t feel the motivation high.
Step 1: Get rid of your internal conflicts
The number one reason most people do not follow through is that they have a lot of chaos within them. Internal conflicts come from living a life that’s based on the expectations and values of others.
They are driven by external motivation, and goals that are not aligned with their values, creating a state of conflict or incongruence.
You’ve been influenced right from a young age by standards that are not logical. You’ve been judged and then learnt to judge yourself in comparison to others, forgetting that you are unique, completely distinct from any other human on the planet.
YOU have your unique fingerprint just so that you can leave a mark that ONLY YOU can.
No one can do what you do like you. The world needs your colour, your quirks, your personality, the way you process information, all of YOU.
You’ll be unable to truly commit to a goal that is not aligned with your values.
Without true commitment, you will only do what’s convenient and comfortable. Once the going gets rough, you’ll give in and give up.
Motivation is just the spark. It might get you going, but the fuel to your proverbial fire is value-centric goals ~ Dr. Alok Trivedi
What you need is inspiration from within that comes from having goals that are aligned with your values as a human being.
Reverse engineer step 1: Know your true values and mission
To get rid of internal conflicts and chaos you need to know what your true values are, and have a mission that’s beyond you.
Take the time to self-reflect to get to know what you are about, and what you truly value.
If you want to live an inspiring life, you need a strong internal driving force.
This driving force comes from knowing, and committing to what’s truly important to, and beyond YOU.
This internal driving force is the only thing I know that’ll give you the strength, and the staying power to withstand life’s setbacks
In our distracted, microwave, I want it now World, you may be tempted to skim over this, but I will encourage you not to.
Remember this: You matter enough to give yourself the best chance of living a life that’s aligned with who you are.
You need to look inward but give outward.
Look inward to know who you are and what you want to contribute, then give outward towards others.
Figure out what your mission is
Your whole life can’t and shouldn’t be just about you. See beyond yourself.
Live a life of connection, service, and contribution. A life focused just on self, will be filled with stress, and cannot withstand the waves of life, because we were not created to live that way.
You need to have a mission bigger than you, that you can anchor your life on. This is what gives you substance, and roots that go deep enough to withstand life’s challenges.
Life is about what you put back into the world, not what you take out of it ~ Tom Rath
If your love and sense of purpose or mission is bigger than your fear and the BS stories you tell yourself, you will be moved to action.
How can you figure out what you most want to contribute to the world?
I have found at least in my case that our biggest pain points are our assignments.
Take this from me, I unintentionally allowed the pain from my past to impact my life and I told myself the same BS stories over and over again for years, until I attended a 3-day seminar recently, called Total Rewire by Dr. Alok Trivedi.
It helped me to finally face the pain, and the stories, and analyze them.
We went through a simple exercise to list 3 painful challenges as a child, and the corresponding emotions felt and experienced at the time.
The idea is that the emotions experienced are the emotions you are avoiding, but that’s creating your current life.
The exercise turned out to be spot on for me.
I realized that my biggest buried pain point from childhood was growing up feeling misunderstood, unaccepted and unsupported.
Now as an adult, it was more painful for me to not be supported in my mission than it was for me to not pursue my mission.
I was living my life actively avoiding feeling unaccepted or unsupported even when it meant doing what others expected of me and neglecting what I truly wanted.
Being a writer for instance makes no sense to the people around me, and I struggled because I was waiting for their approval.
What’s the work?
Remember that humans are a creature of comfort, you move away from pain more than you try to move towards pleasure.
A lot of times where you are, no matter how crappy, has become a place of comfort and the idea of leaving that place to the unknown feels more painful.
It doesn’t seem rational, but that’s what most of us do.
Here’s what you need to do instead. You have to reframe the stories you are telling yourself.
In my case, I had to remind myself that it is more painful to not fulfill my mission than it is to not have the approval or support of those around me.
Remember ‘comfortable’ may be killing you.
Just like in the case of the boiling frog. Because the frog was put in tepid water which was then brought to a boil slowly, it remained ‘comfortable’, and did not perceive the danger until it was too late.
Each stage of your life would progressively get more challenging if you don’t wake up and jump out of the slowly boiling water of life.
Mini Recap:
You matter, and you have something of value to offer.
The only path to living a fulfilled and joyful life, a life that inspires you and one that you don’t have to take a break from to survive, is by developing your treasure, gifts, and talents, and sharing that with the world.
Provide a service to humanity that is beyond you.
The alternative to that is you end up in misery.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, the process is challenging, sometimes brutally difficult and painful, but the alternative is much more painful in the long run.
Keep asking yourself, What is the alternative?
- If I don’t put in the work to heal, grow, and evolve. What is the alternative?
- If I keep seeing the world the same way, if I keep seeing myself and my contributions the same way, what’s waiting for me at the end of this path?
- What alternative am I choosing when I refuse to let go of words that do nothing to uplift me?
- What life am I choosing if I don’t let go of resentment?
You don’t want to get to the end of your life knowing that your emotions, words, and the conditioning of others won.
I know that you would do radical things to avoid pain, but sometimes we don’t even realize that the path we’re on is the path that leads to the most pain, we wrongly assume that the work that’s needed to be done is more painful.
Focusing on short-term gains will lead you down the path to misery. Don’t be addicted to feeling good all the time that you’re not able to withstand obstacles along the way.
Here’s some motivation to get you started
When you take a look at your life, it may look like what I am saying is baloney, trust me I felt that way for a long time, and sometimes I still do.
Right now, the Gremlins are screaming in my ears, but with every tap on my keyboard, I’m learning to tune out their voice and hold on to that which I have known is TRUTH for the longest time, but was too afraid to acknowledge.
You are a unique being, with a magnificent mind.
You would be miserable, and the world would be robbed if you do not get off your backside, develop yourself, and grow.
Don’t get overwhelmed by your present circumstance or the way you show up right now. Simply start by holding this TRUTH in your heart, there is a treasure within you that must come out.
You matter too much to allow yourself to live a life of misery. Waking up to who you could be and staying the course is a form of self-care.
You are worth living a life that inspires you.
You are not stuck, you are creative and resourceful and there is always a way, but you have to be willing to place a bet on yourself, to love yourself enough to give your all to life.
I wake up most days reminding myself of my resolve to not make the cemetery any wealthier than it is right now.
Here’s a question to you my friend: Do you want to get to the end of your life filled with your treasure, making the cemetery a wealthier place?
I bet you don’t. And if you don’t, then don’t.
(See what I did there? I thought that was pretty cool 😎 and I guess it’s okay to toot my horn. No? Okay, moving on)
You’re at a critical point
At different times in life, we get to a critical point where we have to make an important decision or take a stand.
You, my friend, are at one of such critical points.
Because right now you’ve been made aware of or reminded that if you don’t give life your all, you will end up adding your quota to the cemetery.
No matter what your life has been like up until now, you can make a change.
Value yourself enough to put in the work and stay the course.
The most meaningful way to live is to live for something bigger than yourself.
Until the next perfect time ~ Deola
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