As you know, we are in the month of August and it is my favorite month. I've been traveling and I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you in this blog. As I approach another milestone and prepare to celebrate another year of life, I have been reflecting a lot on my life, experiences, and my journey. I was recently having a conversation with friends and telling them how it concerns me that we live in a culture that obsesses over highlight reels without understanding a person's true journey. It is easy to look at my life today and assume that success has come easy. However, nobody knows the silent years of adversity and crisis that I had to overcome on my journey to greatness. Before you give your opinion on the success of another person, understand that you are not qualified to judge anyone's success without understanding their journey. It is only in understanding the journey that you can appreciate the success.
Be kind to yourself. As I get older, I am amazed at the number of people who have abusive relationships with themselves. Before you shut me down, I want you to look at your own life and assess the types of words that you speak to yourself. Do you speak in a compassionate tone? Are you overly critical and condescending when you speak of yourself? For a long time, I had a huge problem speaking kindly to myself. My perfectionist tendencies and low self-worth made it impossible for me to see anything commendable within myself. As a result, I had to change the relationship I had with myself. This required some mental work as well as some inner work. Many times we struggle to love the people in our lives because we have failed to first of all learn how to love ourselves.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. Comparison will cripple your life faster than anything. In this era of social media, it only takes a few moments of scrolling to start comparing your life to someone else. Instead of being grateful for who you are and what you do have, you start to complain about who you are not and what you do not have. From almost forty years of live experience, I can tell you that there is nothing constructive that comes from comparison. It took me a long time to realize that comparison only cripples your capacity. Your greatest value is derived from your difference. Yet we hide our differences and we highlight our similarities. I wasted valuable time trying to conform to who other people thought I should be. However, I was miserable and I was not living out my mission. When I embraced my difference, a world of possibilities and opportunities opened up to me. I discovered that people genuinely loved me for who I am and not for what I could do for them. Comparison is a silent killer destroying the seed of your potential.
Stop counting the moments and start making the moments count. While I thought that 2023 was going to be hard to top, 2024 has already far exceeded all the great things that happened in my life last year. So many doors are opening to me, platforms are emerging and things I have prayed for are manifesting in my life. To some people, it would seem like it has happened overnight. However, those who know me best will tell you that my success story has been decades in the making. When people see me on television, featured in magazines, and being honored for excellence in my field they make lots of assumptions. On the other hand, few people take the time to consider the three times my company almost collapsed, the years when no doors were opening and no opportunities were emerging. Time can either make you its slave or you can make it your servant. In the early years, I was a slave to time. The prevailing question in my mind was: what am I doing wrong? Why is this not working? I am sure we have all asked ourselves those questions at one time or another. You have to stop seeing time as the enemy. Instead, I started to see time as the engine for my growth and development. I stopped watching the clock and I started becoming the change that I wanted to see in my life. As a result, possibilities emerged, doors opened and I collided with success and prosperity in my life. When you make the moments count you are empowered to realize your greatest potential.
Your life is meant to be an exciting adventure. The last two years of my life have brought profound shifts and radical changes in my life. I have been forced out of my comfort zone in so many ways. While I will admit that it has been uncomfortable, I also want to say that it has been very exciting. I have learned more about myself in the last two years than at any other time in my life. Also, I have been challenged to face fears, develop courage, and embrace the exciting adventure that life is. What I can tell you is that everything you desire in life is outside of your comfort zone. As long as you are content with what is familiar, you will never have the courage to pursue your future. Familiarity provides safety but it will never produce a life of significance. Discomfort is where life's greatest discoveries happen. Right now I want to challenge you to embrace the adventure that life is. Take a big leap and dare to pursue the life that you were born for!
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