Drifting Away

Friday, March 14, 2008

“The path to success is filled with failure. People who live their best and truest lives understand that. They are not afraid to fail and not afraid of how they look to others.”

Michael Jordan
“Ex NBA player”

Every high achiever understands that the path to success travels through long fields of failure. But discipline and dedication matter more, in just about every field. And the biggest barrier for many people in reaching their dreams is fear of failure. Our culture emphasizes success to such a degree that we forget to teach about the necessary process of trying, failing, building strength from failure, learning lessons from failure and then try again.

The path to purpose, to becoming what you want is focusing on your own determination to get where you need to go. There is a level of thinking that keeps us from taking the risk to reach our challenging goals. Risk like – what will they think of me if I quit my job and go out on my own? Why try to write a book when nobody thinks I can pull it off? Won’t people think I’m crazy when I quit my job just to volunteer to help the sick and suffering in Africa? Won’t people think I’m crazy if I walk out of my comfortable life to go work with poor people? These are the questions that stand between most of us and our greatest potential.

Michael Jordon made so clear that to get to a place where you win, you need to take risks of doing new things, of investing your time and commitment and resources.

The rich might have money, the rulers might have power, the well-born might have connections but what everyone else has to level the field is risk – the choice to try something that might seem crazy, but to try it wholeheartedly, with discipline over time and without regard for how other people see you. Being different, challenging the old ways of doing things and proving that there is always a choice to make your own path of success will be threatening to people who lack the courage to make their own good fortune.

We can’t sit passively and be truly good and successful. Real goodness and success are expressed in action, not merely just thought. But what are the right actions we should be taking? Right action is the action that helps others reach their goals and live better lives. Virtue is what serves the people we live among and helps them live better, happier lives.

kAkA.hUnTeR

In the depth of winter I finally learnt that there was in me an invincible summer.

spoke at : 3/14/2008 04:32:00 PM

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