The Exploration

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”  Life begins when you decide to ignore the expectations others have of you and start pursuing the expectations you have of yourself. Self-image determines your level of success.  If you are happy with yourself, you are more likely to be happy in any situation. If you believe in yourself and see yourself as a confident person with positive attributes, you are able to recognize how to make your life better. A person with a positive self-image recognizes that their situation is in their own hands. They see their own worth and know that they are capable of changing the things they don’t like about their life. But let’s be real, a positive self-image is hard to develop. It takes time. It takes discipline. It takes believing in yourself. You exist in a world where what you see is always the perfect version. You don’t get to see the rough drafts, you don’t get to see the blank faces, you don’t get to see the start...

“The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency.” I am scared, but this time is not like the last time. Before I was scared of loss. I thought I knew where I was but I was really lost, and I was scared of being lost. Living life without a sense of direction was my worst nightmare. Having a routine has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember so any break from that ordinary routine struck fear into me. The idea of losing the life to which I was accustomed was terrifying. Now, I have realized why I am actually scared. Rather than being afraid of losing what I have, I am afraid of losing what I could have.  Complacency will make a man comfortable in the moment, but it will dismantle him when he realizes all he didn’t have because he was complacent. Because he was afraid of change. My mindset has shifted. I realized that I was afraid of failing before. It is a natural instinct. Nobody wants to fail because with failure comes shame, pain, and...

“Things usually work out in the end. If they don’t, that just means you haven’t come to the end yet.” Life is hard. Mostly because you really don’t have any idea where you are going until you get there. The roads to take are endless and sometimes there are even detours that will take you off on one road and bring you back onto another. When the directions are unclear, it is hard not to lose track of the destination. You know where you want to go but you have no idea how to get there.  Sometimes you have to realize that you must leave some items behind. You can’t bring everything, everyone with you to the destination. Their destination is sometimes much further away or they don’t have the same destination. I have found myself trying to bring some unneeded items on the way to the destination. I have realized that rather than forcing these things with me, I must let them go.  There are too many backseat drivers telling me where to turn, when to stop and when to go. But they have ...

“Life is a book. Chapters close, but not the book itself.” You are the protagonist that is living a story.  The characters at the beginning of the story may not have a big role at the end. New characters are constantly appearing, changing the direction of the journey that the protagonist is on. Throughout the story, the protagonist changes. This change could be positive or negative, but the character will change. At the end of the story, in some shape or form, the protagonist is a different person than they were at the beginning.  The person they are at the end was completely determinant on the plot of the story. The decisions the protagonist made throughout the story ultimately leads to their fate.  The story is continuous, but it is broken up with chapters. In the story of life, the chapters aren’t quite recognized until they have changed. The person living the story doesn’t see the end of a chapter until time has passed and they realize that it was a chapter. But what ...

“Any work looks wonderful to me except for the work I can do.” An alias presents the work without the worker. It is a way to divert attention from the author. At least that’s what I thought I was doing when I created it. What I didn’t realize at the time is that I was simply trying to hide. I realized that I am still not proud of my work because I hide behind the identity of an alias. To step forward, I must present myself as I am. I must face my fear and show it who is in charge. Every single person has a gift and those who seem like they don’t are just hiding it from you. Media has taken over our lives. We are only shown the best of people. If you don’t think you can compare to those people, you don’t think that your work is worthy of showing. What you don’t realize, is that at one point in time those people were all in the exact same position that you are now. They were all talented people scared to show what they had to the world because they weren’t good enough. Things changed for...

“The worst thing about slavery is that the slaves eventually get to like it.” Definition: Slavery: excessive dependence on or devotion to something. Knowing this, ask yourself… WHAT ENSLAVES ME? … Who is choosing to do the things you do everyday? Is it actually you? Or do you do those things because you are DEPENDENT on them? The more I reflect on my own life, the more I try to cut out my dependencies. Freedom is discovered when you realize that you are the one in control of your decisions, not your dependencies. Our needs are what make us dependent. We do not have control of our needs, they are in our biology, but we can control how we fulfill them. Each person has 5 simple groups of needs: Physiological Safety Belonging  Esteem Self-actualization The key word here: NEEDS. These things are necessary. So why is it so easy to give up on the last three once the first two are met? Because we are enslaved by the things that provide the means of achieving the first two so much that we ...

“You can do anything you put your mind to.” Growing up I was blessed enough to be told this phrase plenty of times. This was a phrase that both my parents repeated to me day after day. I always said “yes I know, I know” just trying to wave them off. But in reality, I didn’t know. They knew it but I sure as hell didn’t. The reason: I never believed in myself. I never had the belief in myself to fully dedicate my mind to it. The limiting beliefs I had of myself always brought me back to square one. My mind was never strong enough to overcome the barriers that I had created for myself. After time, I worked and worked to develop more confidence. As I grew it just simply came. Then, I realized that the phrase I had heard all my life had finally made a difference. Hearing it all these times had finally caught up. I started gaining traction and working on myself and every time I would want to give up I would hear this phrase echoing through my mind. It took over two decades for this phrase to...

“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you aren’t saying ‘no’ to yourself.” The crab analogy: When placing crabs in a bucket, a fisherman doesn’t need to worry about the crabs escaping, even though they can. Why? Because when one crab tries escaping, the other crabs make sure to pull it back. Most crabs accept being stuck in the bucket once they are put in there. But some realize that escape is possible. Other crabs pull the visionary crabs back because if they can’t escape, nobody else can either. WHO IN YOUR LIFE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SUCCEED? Everyone has friends that will want you to stay right where you are. They know you are capable of doing big things but they don’t think that of themself. So they hold you back. They see you trying to escape from the mold and they hold on for dear life.  Humans want everything to be fair. They want equality. But some humans don’t ever adopt the mindset that they can do more in life than what was given to them. They see people like them tryin...

  “Success is the product of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” I used to go about life waiting for the day where I would become an overnight success. I saw so many examples of people’s rise to fame being nearly instantaneous. One day they were working the same old job then BOOM all of the sudden they are rich and have all of these fans that love everything they do. In my mind, that was how things worked. But finally I realized the truth about overnight successes: there is no such thing. Overnight success is a result of compounding small, productive decisions for years. For those that simply view the drastic change, it seems to happen overnight. But for the one who experiences the transformation, they know how much work went in behind the scenes. Every single success you have seen in any industry is a result of hours of work. To truly become a master at what you do, you must put in the time. The more time you put into something, the more astonishing the outcome ...

“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” Taking the easy route always catches up to you. I grew up with a kid that seemed like he had everything. He was good looking, smart, and athletic. His parents gave him whatever he wanted. But he never quite realized what he had. He never appreciated anything that was given to him and coasted through the first 18 years of his life. I was always jealous of how easy life was for him. Eventually, the years of taking the easy route caught up to him. The girl who he thought he’d marry broke his heart. His parents got divorced. He started failing his college classes and didn’t graduate after 5 years.  The years of being undisciplined and lackadaisical in everything he did ended up completely changing the course of his life.  WHEN HANDED SUCCESS, YOU MUST DO SOMETHING WITH IT OR IT WILL BE GIVEN TO SOMEONE WORTHY OF HANDLING IT. Life was handed to him on a silver platter and he ignored it. Seeing examples like this firsthand, I have re...

“Every time I came to the end of the block and stepped off the goddamn curb, I had a feeling I’d never get to the other side of the street.” The ideal life can be created with a strong imagination. I have created mine. The images of that life are vivid. They flood my brain each day as I awaken. If I really try, I can almost live the life that is happening within my mind. It is quite terrifying. The strength of my imagination has always overwhelmed me. I would create make-believe characters with backstories living in their own, unique worlds. In play, I would take on a completely new identity of a person with the ideal life. The life that I wanted to have. Daydreams can cure sadness for a moment, but they always end. Then reality sets in. The reality of those dreams never happening is always depressing. Life is always somber when the high is over.  For so long, the ideal life was simply a figment of my imagination. But now, I ask myself: AM I LIVING MY IDEAL LIFE? At a point in tim...