You Are Your Problem, But You Are Also Your Solution

Life’s tough.

I won’t argue that it’s not, but it’s tough for everyone in different ways. Some of you were born into shitty families who don’t care about you, some of you were not. Some of you were born with a mental or physical disability, some of you were not. Some of you were born into money, some of you were not.

And you can’t change any of that, but you can change where you go from there.

If you want to make excuses for why you can’t do something, then go ahead. You can pitty yourself and your situation. You can pretend you’re the only one who has ever gone through a tough time or had a tough life. You can feel sorry for yourself all you want, but feeling sorry for yourself will never get you anywhere.

You are your own problem, but you are also your solution.

Shit happens that is outside of our control all the time – we can’t control that part of life, but what we can control is how we react to our situations. We can choose if we want to lay down and ask the world for pitty or if we are going to pick ourselves back up and keep moving forward.

Life will destroy you if you let it. You can let life kick the shit out of you or you can fight back. You can fight your way to be where you want. It won’t happen over night, it will take time, even years, and it will take failure, but if you want something you have to go get it. You have to be motivated by failure – fail forward. You have to keep going when things get tough. You’re already suffering so you might as well get to the place you want to be if you’re putting yourself through this torture.

If you want to feel bad for yourself, feel bad for yourself, but only for a day. Don’t dwell in the negativity of your life, you’re only feeding it that way. Everyone on this earth gets the same 24 hours, but it matters what you do in that 24 hours that is going to make the difference in your life.

You have the same 24 hours a day that Hilary Swank has; she grew up in a trailer park her whole childhood before her and her mom lived in a car together when she was 16 in LA. You have the same 24 hours a day that Jim Carrey has; he had to quit school at 15 to become a janitor to help his family survive, while they were living out of a van. You have the same 24 hours a day that Jay-Z has; he was thirteen living on the streets in Brooklyn. And you got the same damn 24 hours as the richest self-made woman in America has – Oprah wore clothes made out of potato sacks and was sexually assaulted at age nine.

And now they’re all part of the top 15 celebrities that grew up poor. They didn’t let life stop them, they’re resilient, just like most humans are.

Every single person who became successful had to go through some type of struggle. No one ever reached success without facing obstacles, no one.

You can say “but I’m not Jay-Z” and you’re right you’re not Jay-Z, but you can be whoever you want to be. You can make a name for yourself or you can be content behind your desk job. Don’t get me wrong, you got to do what you go to do to support your family and yourself, but don’t let that be the end of your life. Don’t let that be as far as you make it when you are capable of so much more. Work the desk job, take care of your family, but keep looking for more. Keep looking for new opportunities and if you can’t find any then make some.

You might not be great right now, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of being successful in the future.

You need to visualize yourself. You need to decided where you want to be in 10 years. You need to set a plan and imagine where you want to be in the future. See who you want to be and realize where you are right now doesn’t need to be where you’ll be forever. One day you will be successful, but only if you believe it. You might be surrounded by a whole lot of nothing right now, but if you don’t give up and you keep pushing forward one day you will find that success, but if you quit you will never be there.

You are the reason you’re not as successful as you want to be, you can’t blame anyone other than yourself for that. Don’t be your own problem anymore, stop holding yourself back from living the life you want to live. It all comes down to you. You have the ability to change your life, you just need a vision and you need to believe in yourself more than you believe in anything. You need to know your dreams can be a reality if you just keep working towards them year after year.

The best thing about this life is you can’t change where you come from, but you can change where you go from there.

Life is tough, so buckle up for the ride and fight like hell to get where you want to be at the end of the day, and don’t ever give up.