Chase your hero

 “And to my hero. That's who I chase. When I was 15 years old I had a very important person in my life come and ask me 'Who's your hero?' I said, 'I thought about it and it's me in ten years. So I turned 25 ten years later and that same person comes to me and goes, 'Are you a hero?' I said, 'Not even close!' She said why and I said, 'My hero is me at 35.' You see, every day, and every week, and every month, and every year of my life, my hero is always ten years away. I'm never going to be my hero. I'm not going to obtain that and that's fine with me because it keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.”

This quote is from Matthew McConaughey’s 2014 Oscar acceptance speech.

A video of this speech was shown to me and really made me think about how I see myself. By seeing your future self as your present hero, you will always have something to strive for, to improve on, to get better at. 

Why would you ever want to become your past hero?

The person you wanted to be in the past is always different than the person you strive to be in the present. You have gone through new experiences, learned new skills, gained new perspectives. And you will never stop doing those things. Each day you live, you gain new knowledge of something. You may not think it, but every single day is added to your memory and stored. Some days may seem like they are completely forgettable, but they had an impact on you.

I learn more every single day. I learn more about what I want to be every single day. I learn more about how I can improve every single day.

My hero from 10 years ago might be the current me, but the current me is not my current hero.

I don’t want this to be my hero. Because my hero is doing things better than I am right now. My hero has more figured out. He is doing things that I could never dream of doing in my life. But he has figured out a way to do them. I don’t know what is going to happen within those 5 years, but I know what that person should look like so I need to figure out what must happen in those 10 years for that to happen. 

I’ll never be content with my current self, and that’s fine.

I don’t want to be. 

I strive to be the person I will be in 10 years. The person with 10 more years of wisdom, experience, skill. And when that 10 years is up, I will strive to be the me 10 years from then. It is a constant chase.

Your heroes aren’t meant to be met.

You make them a hero in your mind because your perception of who they are is always better than who they actually are. 

Keep it that way.

Let your heroes be the thing that motivates you. 

Strive to be your own hero.

***

Thank you for reading!

My goal is to inspire self-improvement in others through my personal stories and experiences.

This is The Exploration.