It’s funny when you get to a point in life when people start bringing awesome stuff to your attention.
Last night saw me up late, trying to sort out some writer’s block (an ailment that seems to be recurring the later I make it into the year), when a friend of ours dropped me a line, Long story short, she introduced me to a show called The Sing-Off, with my favourite from this season—Afro-Blue:
Pretty amazing a cappella, right? I was impressed and dancing along—or so I thought. She then proceeded to show me this video from Committed—last season’s winners (skip to 2 minutes in):
That was the easiest 99 cents that Apple made right there. YOU CAN’T FAKE THIS LEVEL OF TALENT!
In danger of sounding like a broken record, there’s a certain level reached—after so many hours invested of blood, sweat, tears, practice and honing one’s skills—where you’ll be ready to take on the world.
Many of us don’t ever get to this level, though. There are the reasons we’ve looked at before—we put too much on our plates; we don’t want to put the years of time and effort necessary to truly shine at something—but there’s something else there as well.
FEAR.
Sometimes, we’re wont to convince ourselves that we can never be as good as other people we see, or that we’ll never be able to improve past a certain point, and all the efforts we put into getting there will be for nought.
That’s poisonous thinking. That’s a part of you speaking who fails to have your best interests at heart. The part that wants to get you comfortable being at a certain place in life and never pushing forward to deal with further challenges in life.
You might not be a superstar. You might not be able to cash in on your talents to sleep on a pile of money. But you definitely won’t pull anything off if the effort and perseverance needed to succeed scare you off!
So if hard work makes you want to curl up in a wall and hide away, it’s a fear I’d get over sooner than later! The people who make it anywhere in the world without investing a good deal of themselves are in a puny minority, so it’s not a train of thought that you’ll likely benefit from.
It’s time to buckle up (or buckle down—I really don’t know if there’s a difference there), steel yourself and figure out what you’re all about so you can be the best you can be. Because it will be tough. The journey will have numerous times that will suck. But you’re the only one in control of whether it will pay off.
268/365
