Desperate to Find Your Greatness? Commit Yourself to the Climb
The Climb is All There Is
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe
It doesn’t matter how bad you want it.
It doesn’t matter that you want it as bad as you can breathe.
It doesn’t matter that you’d do anything to have it, to ‘make’ it.
It doesn’t matter how many bruises you have or how much resistance you’ve met along the way.
The truth is, no amount of thinking will make your dreams come true. The only thing that matters now is putting in the work every day to succeed.
Because if you don’t do that, your dreams will stay a fantasy forever.
Why The Climb is All There Is
Your dream is like a mountain with slopes and crests and edges, and if you don’t keep on climbing you’ll never get to the top.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to be on a talk show on national television or become a writer people respect and admire.
If you’re not putting in the work today then you’ve already lost.
No matter what you envision yourself to be, you’ll never make it without taking small steps today.
You’ll never reach any goal without exerting a conscious effort to get yourself closer to the top. That’s a guarantee.
Why Do You Deserve to Have It?
You do have to want it more than you can breathe, but you also have to give it the space to breathe on its own. Because without that space your dreams will suffocate and slowly wither away until there’s nothing left but the promise of what could’ve been.
Without that space to grow, they may never come to light.
Without that space, you threaten to destroy the potential that could’ve been realized if you’d only stuck with it for one more day.
And even if they do come true, will you really be any different after achieving them?
Will life suddenly become better just because somebody is paying you for what you want to do and you’re now able to do more of that thing you love?
Stop Setting a Deadline On Your Dreams
The truth is I put way too much pressure on myself to “make it” over this past year that I ended up not arriving anywhere meaningful at all.
I tried to put a deadline on my dreams and when I didn’t get to the point I wanted to be I got stressed. I burnt myself out. The fire that ignited me before now drove me to procrastinate, to put off writing, to throw it all away.
I didn’t even want to look at my words anymore. They were awful, they were terrible — just looking at them made me sick. I felt like a failure, a no-good fraud.
How would I ever inspire anyone to follow their dreams the same way that someone like Jon Morrow inspired me to pursue my dream of being a full-time writer?
You Need to be Okay with ‘Not-Moving’
Jon Westenberg has talked about how his desire to ‘make it’ left him feeling empty inside when he’d finally reached success by any clear definition of the word. After wanting to be a rockstar for so long, he had his chance to be famous now by signing a record label.
Even now, tons of people read and love his posts as a writer here on Medium. But does that mean he is successful?
I bet I wouldn’t be too far off by saying that he still feels a bit empty inside. That every day when he sits down to write, he still feels like a bit of a fraud even though he’s ‘made it’.
Like he says, we don’t make our dreams; instead, they make us. And I think that’s a step in the right direction.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Wanting Something Bigger Than Yourself
Our dreams have a habit of grabbing a hold of us, and it can feel as if they won’t let us go unless we relentlessly pursue them like an obsession.
Yet it’s okay to want something so bad it melts your face just thinking about it. It’s actually great, it’s perfectly normal — it means you’re human and alive.
I mean, what’s the alternative? To ignore it and feel dead inside and then feel empty because you’ve pushed away your passion for nobody else to see?
No, I don’t accept that reality. Moving towards our dreams is all we can do.
If you work hard enough and persist enough, your dreams will come to you when you’re ready for them.
And not a moment before.
Does Anyone Ever Truly ‘Make It’?
The truth is, we’re all struggling towards the goals we want to make.
We want to be famous, we want to be read, we want to be noticed and even validated by others. All the writers I know are like this, and it’s only human to want to be recognized. It makes us feel good, it makes us feel appreciated, and it makes us feel wanted and loved and adored.
It’s not much different from pursuing a spouse, then. Because it fills a void in our heart where we’re missing something, that spark of what we call ‘love’ and that hole which we fill with outer appreciation.
But ask yourself this:
When will you ever make it?
Because only you can define that for yourself.
You Are Good Enough Now
I don’t have all the answers… but what I do know is this:
We all have a dream that’s grabbed a hold of us and life is too short not to work towards your vision of success.
So you have two options:
- You can either give it all you got and embrace the blood, sweat, and tears and accept the results as they are.
- Or you can look up the slope and realize how much you still have to climb and get disheartened and give up.
Acceptance or refusal.
Surrender or denial.
Those are the only choices we really have when it comes down to the end of the line.
So What Will You Do?
Will you abandon your progress for a safer cause and give up because there’s just too much work to do? Or will you keep going, despite the hardships and the adversity and the eternal struggle of the climb?
The slope will never go away. It’s just a fact of life. So you can either embrace it or shrug it off and go do something else that’s easier.
But if you’re willing to put in the work and to keep on climbing despite all the people telling you not to and the overwhelming reasons to just stop, you might just make something out of this thing called life. Popular entrepreneurs like Jeff Goins, James Altucher and Gary Vaynerchuk make the climb every day and I bet they never take their success for granted. Even popular writers that are on Medium like Ayodeji Awosika, Niklas Goeke and Tom Kuegler started from zero and built their audiences to gargantuan sized numbers over a long period of time.
All of the people I listed above — whether you agree with their views or ideas or not — have all tapped into the power of their greatness to move mountains. They’ve all figured out what their authentic voice looks like and by sharing it with the world, they’re making waves by doing so (regardless of how many ‘haters’ on naysayers they attract).
Even though they constantly fail, stumble, and lose some of the battles they fight, they still persist because they’ve realized that climbing is all they can do. That’s all they know how to do.
The truth is, if you’re not climbing, you’re going to be left behind.
So make a conscious effort to keep moving forward even if that means giving your brain a break for the day.
If you’re stuck, climb.
If you’re doing well, climb.
If you’re doing okay, climb.
Whatever your circumstances — whether they’re good, bad, or somewhere in-between, you need to be committed to put your head down and grind.
That’s how you move towards your best life and make progress on your dreams.
Wherever you are, no matter how successful you feel, you need to keep climbing to reach your dreams and live in you greatness every day.
Turn The Tables by Adopting the Mindset of a Pro
Yes, it’s important to do the work you need to succeed. And it’s important to set deadlines to meet your goals.
Just don’t put a timeline on reaching your biggest dreams.
You don’t need that kind of pressure to perform by “X amount of time”.
Instead, just keep climbing and moving forward.
What happens to us is the tide threatens to wash us away and distract us from the climb with mundane worries.
If we don’t hold onto the mountain for dear life, then, we’ll be dooming ourselves to a quiet life in a box; because if we let it, life will rip us away from the climb and persuade us to abandon the slope for safer pastures and a solid grip on the land closest to our grasp.
But you can’t let it no matter what.
Because in the end, the climb is all there is.
And if we forsake that, what is left for us to aspire to?
Blake Powell is a writer, dreamer, and doer. He is sharing his journey and his soul every day for 30 days in March, and he aims to inspire writers and creatives as he goes. If you’re looking to grow your audience and engagement on Medium, you can click here to join his free challenge today.
