The Best Advice You Don’t Want to Hear

New goals are awesome. They are inspiring, motivating, and thrilling to imagine. Big goals are even better, especially when you first experience that “Aha!” moment – the flash of genius that sends you off in a whole new direction.

Photo Credit: Ella’s Dad

There’s just one problem – eventually, that new goal will lose its luster. It’s not going to sparkle and shine like it once did.

At some point, you are going to realize that the achievement of this big new goal is going to require something you don’t have, don’t like, or simply don’t want to do.

At some point, doubt will creep in. You will begin to question why you ever embarked on this journey in the first place.

That’s when the second “Aha!” moment kicks in: “Oh no! This goal is going to require real, hard, unforgiving, and thankless WORK.”

The Willingness to Continue Fighting

You’re going to have to fight hard for your dreams. Really. You will have to work, work, and work some more to get all those things your heart desires.

This is where is the rubber meets the road. Your ultimate success in any endeavor comes down to your willingness to push forward far into the future.

“Commitment is doing the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.”

– Darren Hardy

The reality is that it sucks to hear that you will have to keep fighting for your dreams. Super-achievement only happens after many, many hours of real work.

It’s not pretty, but that is where the magic happens.

True beauty is the ability to fight, fight, and keep on fighting.

Becoming Yourself, Again

Accomplishing big goals requires you to give more, push harder, and live bolder than ever before.

This process will cause you to question your motives, your true reasons for starting this process at all. It may even ask you to re-examine who you really are and what you truly want out of life.

Each day we must consistently and bravely become someone new – reinventing ourselves – finding who we were all along – our truly authentic self – the person we have lost touch with and hid from, the person we must return to, and the person we must fully accept.

Authenticity is only genuine if we have fallen away from ourselves and then boldly returned with a new vigor that reaffirms our existence, our purpose, and our ability to positively impact others.

In search of a life well-lived, we must help others find the greatness that lies within them. In that journey, we will discover how great our own lives have become.

Ambition is Courage

The daily grind of goal achievement will require the ambition to begin and the courage to continue.

Ambition is the courage to discover what is truly possible for you. It is a daily decision to step out if your comfortable skin and into a new person – a different version of yourself.

Ambition requires you to act with a courage you have, but may have squandered, hid from view, or intentionally distracted yourself from.

To live ambitiously is to step into the life you were meant to live – bringing to life the passionate YOU that is living dormant inside.

To be ambitious is to be yourself without a filter.

The Best Advice to Keep the Fight Alive

To achieve something you never have achieved before, you must become a new person.

That newness will require change.

The act of change will require work.

Real work consists of doing the things that must be done, whether you like it or not.

Doing work you don’t want to do will require new skills and discipline.

You will need a strong WHY or purpose to drive you when the discipline is all dried up.

That purpose will be emotional and powerful and personal and permanent.

True success, impact, and greatness are all achieved by people who fight for a cause that is bigger than themselves, with a willingness to sacrifice everything they have, and everything they are, in order to get everything they have ever imagined.