🤝 Career & Personal Development

Creating Success - How hard work and a change in attitude can put you at ease

But I am too ____

We all get that way. “I am too dumb”, “I never got the right education”, “Some people are just born with talent”. Whatever your current narrative is, if you think you’d like to be getting more out of your career or life, then I have got good news for you: you have more control than you may realize!

Hard Work

It is truly staggering the amount of time human beings have lost to self doubt. I think deep down we all want to work hard, but we also want to know that it will be “worth it”. Well, my friend, if you are reading this please consider deeply pondering what is meant by “The Journey Is The Reward”.

It is true that we should expect to be acknowledged, rewarded and appreciated for our efforts. But sometimes the outside World will not give back to you what you feel you deserve. Cool thing is, though, that you are the only person you need to prove anything to.

When you learn to do hard work, not expecting an outcome, something amazing happens. You begin to feel fufilled. You have done your part. In life there are things we can control and things we can not control. If you show up and do the damn thing, you start to get excited about more of the “doing”. All of this sudden it’s right in front of you, the results of your hard work. What’s cool about this is now you get to decide if it’s good enough. You get to decide if you need to alter your approach. You get to decide if you are proud of our your efforts or not.

Chances are, instead of feeling defeated and not good enough, by showing yourself you are willing to show up and work hard regardless of the outcome, you in turn show yourself that your progression towards mastery is completely within your hands.

You will show yourself: “Turns out, I can do the damn thing!”.

No one can take away your work ethic. Not even AI. The World is changing? So be it; I know I can trust myself to show up and tackle the task before me - even when the task continues to change, you will be the type of person who knows how to take that first step towards conquering it.

I know it can be hard to believe, but: HARD WORK FEELS GOOD

Attitude

If you’re convinced you can’t, then you surely won’t. A simple truth that took me entirely too long to understand.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of anything at all

Seeesh, story of my life. Constantly refining and planning and considering and reassessing and reconsidering and second guessing and deliberating and yadda, yadda, yadda. If you are reading these words, then you are reading a very imperfect blog post, on an imperfect website, written by an imperfect human (not an AI, I swear).

Thing is, a few years ago there’s no way I would have considered writing a blog. Who am I? What do I know? Well, I am a human being, with life experience and I happen to know a lot as a result! Why not share?

So are you, don’t sell yourself short.

It takes some of us longer than others to realize that we all have something to contribute. I wish I could blow you away with some deep knowledge about an esoteric subject; something pedantic and academic. But that’s not my path. Instead I can share with you some softer skills and encouraging words about navigating the path of self love, self discovery and self empowerment. Lord knows I have learned a thing or two about that in my day!

Be kind to yourself - be kind to others - work hard - show up - fail - succeed - fail again - brush it off - begin again.

Summary

I hope you go do that workout, start that home improvement project, or chip away at that project until you finally show yourself that you deserve that promotion, regardless of what your boss thinks. At the end of the day, if you can prove to yourself you earned it, and I mean really prove it - then it won’t matter what anyone else thinks. We come into this world alone and we leave alone. The only person who you should be focused on proving anything to is yourself. Working hard gives you the confidence you can begin again, do the thing, and make steady, incremental progress.

Keep in mind, sometimes showing up and working hard looks a lot like slowing down. It is up to you to know when you have the energy to put the pedal to the metal. On the days you feel good, pursue like there’s no tomorrow. On the days that you need to rest, recognize that sometimes the hardest work a human can do is to simply “be”.

with 🤍 from T