The Difference Between Settling At Your Plateaus And Achieving Your Dreams:
[Working harder.]
You’ll probably leave now. If not, you have a chance.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m horrible at this. I try to “work smart, not hard” whenever I can, but that in itself is an excuse. “Work smart” doesn’t make sense. Everyone is working as smart as they can, the outliers are the ones who work hard.
If you can “work smart” then you have no excuse not to also work hard. Your only excuse — and the one you won’t admit to yourself — is comfort.
You’re happy where you are. You’re happy not setting new goals. You’re happy being a complacent human-being stifled by your own lack of self-progression, of self-pacing, of a self-perpetuating need to do more.
Maybe you had goals, and by this point you’ve accomplished all of them — so in your happiness and wonderment for what you’ve accomplished you’ve become numb.
[Numb.]
Numb to the initial need that you had to create those goals in the first place. Numb to the understanding that you weren’t able to sit still for long, and that’s why you dreamed so big, and set goals so high. Numb to the fact that that drive is also why you ended up achieving those goals.
Numb feeling that is now turning to a dull pain in the back of your spine. A dull pain that tells you there is something deeper that you didn’t understand all along. The dull pain echoes the reasoning for your drive, because you can’t sit still, you can’t not act, you can’t not work as hard as you possibly can, to achieve all you possibly can.
Because you’re driven.
[Driven.]
Driven, not by money, fame, notoreity — but by a need to be better, do better, to always improve. You’re driven not by your desire to be seen, to be heard, to be known, but by your desire to know that you’re better, for your own self.
Your version of being driven was driven into a ditch the moment you achieved your goals. You became stagnant, you became sterile of the deep fervor that once roiled within you. You became happy. Happiness doesn’t always speak to what happiness should. Sometimes happy simply means comfort.
Comfort is the enemy of progress.
[Comfort.]
Comfort makes you want to keep things the way they are, not strive to improve them at every corner. Comfort lets you look at a life half tapped and see a life fully full. Comfort is when your feet are firmly on the ground, nestled, not moving, but standing still is not smart in a field of enemies.
Comfort is the enemy. Chaos is the friend.
[Chaos.]
Chaos is where you thrive. When things are happening, not in a linear progression, but overlapping, intertwining, circling around in a cyclone of opportunity, movement, emotion, and progression. This is where you came from, this is what you miss.
You want your life to mean something, you want to achieve more, to build more, do more, and be proud of yourself — but you’re comfortable now doing just enough. Just enough is not enough. Not for you, you need the chaos, you need the more, that’s where you thrive, anytime you escape it you strive to get back, or you fall into stagnation.
You’re ambitious — not for more stuff — but for more movement.
[Movement.]
Movement is the end-game. You never want to sit still, you want to move until the day that you die. You want to push forward, break barriers, overcome obstacles, see what you can do, prove yourself, push yourself, you never want to stop moving.
You don’t want to stop moving, you don’t want your past to catch up to your present, you don’t want your detractors, the imposters, to gain that ground. Because the second you stop moving, your competition starts to move ahead.
[Ahead.]
Ahead is where you strove to be. Ahead is for what you’ve always fought. Before achieving the lead you fought tooth and nail to grab at every opportunity, to absorb every resource, and to never stopped moving forward.
Once you got ahead you liked the feeling, and that comfort crept in once again to complacency.
Feel the pain, kill the comfort, keep the chaos, become driven by movement, and stay ahead.
[Work harder.]
This post was inspired by introspection and the story of Casey Neistat’s tattoo. If you dug it and gained any inspiration from it I’d love if you recommended it and shared it below!
