The Demons Won’t Win.

Kyle Robert Luken
Aug 24, 2017 · 5 min read

As I sit here in my basement pondering what I’ve been doing for the past (almost) 24 years of my life, and what I’m planning to accomplish in the next 84 years before I go 6 feet under (yes, I’m living to 108 so I can see 3 centuries), there are a few questions that linger through my mind of what I need to think about more than anything else if I plan to carry out my dreams and live how I want to:

“What do you want your legacy to be, and how do you want to be remembered?”

“Who is counting on you to become successful so they can live better off because you lived? Whose lives can you change for the better if you accomplish what you want to?”

“In all seriousness, what is your alternative?”

I think about one of my mentors, Gary Vaynerchuk, every time these things come up because there’s one thing he’s said that has stuck with me to this day, which is “If you want to be an anomaly, you have to act like one.”

This world is weird, but it’s full of so many amazing people. We’re grown and raised in a society that teaches you how to be a good employee, and asks what you want to be when you grow up, but we never really encourage the thought of even “what kind of life do you want to live?” instead. We’re raised in a world that has negativity and drama as the center of most news and entertainment channels. Hatred for one another because of another person’s race, religion, creed, color, or sexual orientation, and we judge people before we even see the true beauty of what they have to offer the world on the inside…

The way some people that feel and act like I do throws other people off. Why? Because we aren’t average. We aren’t like the status quo of people that wake up and live like the rest of the world. We don’t think about others more than ourselves. We don’t think past the weekend, or even 2 weeks down the road when we’re looking for another paycheck. Some do, don’t get me wrong, but in today’s society, that’s not normal, and it kind of makes people uncomfortable when it’s forced upon them to take their own initiative if they’re placed in a situation like that where they’re not prepared for it, nor even want to be in in the first place.

I’ve never known a life like that. I’ve always known I wanted to do something more in my life, and I’ve done my best to try and go the extra mile in what I need to do for other people and myself to get the job done and done exceptionally well. I plan to live the kind of life most would dream about, the fighter is in me, and the strength of God is on my side….

But something inside eats at me, and I want this demon to escape my soul. Maybe it’s a fear as I developed as a young boy through some of my tragic experiences…maybe it’s something I’ve trained myself to believe it’s true in my own mind through my Dark Ages…maybe it’s something that will be with me forever and I need to have a daily battle with it to overcome it as I am right at this moment. But this fear needs to leave…

I’m not scared of success, I know one day I’ll get what I deserve. I’m not scared of letting people down, because I have done that in the past a few times, and I’m human and I know I’m not perfect.

But it’s the fear of not being good enough for those that I love most…knowing that I have all this potential (man, I hate that word) and not living up to my greatness that God has put inside me, not squeezing every single ounce out of it. I worry of what my parents will think of me if I’m not the son that is able to take care of them when they are old, if they aren’t proud of me and see a waste in time…I worry of what my friends will think of me if I don’t provide the value they need from me in their times of needing advice and guidance, knowing that they can’t count on me…I worry for my siblings that I won’t be the big brother they need me to be, yet still feel comfortable enough to come to me for anything that they need…

This demon is there…and eats away at me…but it won’t defeat me. It won’t end me, and it certainly won’t belittle me into something I will never want to see, which is an average man of little worth who let everyone down. A man that had everything going for him, and decided to do nothing to little with it.

The time is now, like it always has been, and we all have power to make the changes we want to, no matter what is against us. We all have our demons, we all have our struggles, we all have our trials & tribulations, but life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of how you react to it. You control 2 things: your ACTIONS and your ATTITUDE. So you can wallow away in your sorrows, and let the demon win and eat you alive, or you can find the strength inside you to fight. You can find the power deep within your soul and your entire being to shred through whatever obstacles come in your way like an unstoppable force.

Me? I plan on becoming the latter. I was meant for greatness, and you were too. I wasn’t meant to live an average life, and I don’t want that for you. I was meant to create value in others, show them they are enough, help them be happy and become who they want to be, all in the ideal of doing phenomenal things with one another. I was meant for creating a life that this world is looking at as a fantasy, but I’m willing to put in the work to make it a reality. I plan on treating my future wife as a queen that she will be, and my future kids to grow up the right way to go make an impact in the world as well. I plan on acting like the anomaly, even if it means being alone in a world where people tend to look at me as “crazy” or “weird” or “radical”. Because I am one. My family, my friends, my legacy relies on nothing else but me succeeding. There is no alternative. I can, I must, and I will.

So now, I ask you, and take as long as you need to figure it out:

There are people that are counting on you. What do you want to leave behind as a legacy for you and your family, and how do you want to be remembered? And what is your alternative if you don’t live up to that?

One life. Squeeze every second and breath out of it. It’s short, but it’s worth it if you play your cards right.

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