I’ve been learning from Brian Tracy for decades. In his book, Maximum Achievement, he writes about the realities of the human condition. I first read this more than 20 years ago; I’ve read it often since. It got my attention. I committed it to memory. I recalled it every time I was ready to give up on my dreams.
First, life is hard. It always has been and it always will be. It’s never been any different for you or me or anyone else. The good thing is that if you accept this basic truth, life somehow becomes a little easier because you don’t suffer so much from feelings of frustration and injustice.
Second, everything you are or ever will be is up to you. You are where you are today because that is where you have chosen to be. You are always free to choose your actions, or inactions, and your life today is the sum total of your choices, good or bad. If you want your future to be different, you have to make better choices.
Third, and perhaps most important, you can learn anything you need to learn to become anyone you want to become, to achieve anything you want to achieve. There are very few limitations and most of them are on the inside, not on the outside.
Yes, life is hard for everyone. Once we accept this, life becomes easier. Everything is up to us. We are responsible for our choices. For change to occur around us, we must change first. We can learn anything we need to achieve anything we desire. Our limitations are internal, not external.
That sums it up; I think he nailed it. What do you think? More importantly: What will you do?
I think is one of your better ones and very timely with parents having kids being let out of school. No excuses, no complaining, just do it! Thank you for good advice and reminder.
Wade
Advice like this frustrates me. It’s useful and true up to a point, but to suggest that life is equally hard for everybody is to deny reality. Systemic injustice exists. If you could somehow invent two people whose circumstances were identical except that (just as a for instance) one was white and one was black, the white person would have an easier time of things—and it wouldn’t be because the the black person chose to be black, or chose for society to be racist.