Success Mindset

Are You Motivated Enough to Achieve Your Dreams?

Screen Shot 2013-04-23 at 10.22.31 AMMost people will die having never fulfilled their big dreams or goals.

Most people will end their life overweight, in debt, having worked too much and played too little. A life full of opportunity constantly delayed.

A life of putting off what could have been because of work, or tiredness, or overwhelm, or general busyness, or perhaps Facebook, or maybe just because they never could quite step off that ledge and risk doing what it would take to live a life less ordinary.

Worse still, than the failure to ever give their dreams a shot, is the reality that most people will die never having been true to themselves.

With their deepest beliefs and values ignored for so long that they were nearly forgotten.

With, as the saying goes, their light still inside of them.

Last year, my 80-year old Grandfather passed away unexpectedly. It was unexpected despite his age, as he appeared in very good fitness and had the kind of energy and personality that made us expect him to live forever. I don’t think there was a single person who walked out of his funeral service without some sort of contemplation of their own life.

The amount that man had achieved, created, given and loved is beyond description. I’ve honestly never heard of anyone else who has lived a life so full, and so on purpose. And right up until his last active days.

A story like his stands out, not because he made millions or created an empire, but because anyone listening to his story knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was a man who did everything he wanted to do and everything his values told him he needed to do.

And in doing so, unlike the very vast majority of people, he left his light behind him. Yes, he died with plans for the future and for new adventures dancing in his mind, but also with the certainty that everything he’d wanted to do, be, and have in his 80 years –

Had come to pass.

Right now, can you stand up and name a single person who lives their life this way? I know I’d struggle. I know that my own life, while very much what it is due to my deliberate choice to live my dreams, more so than most, still has black hole areas of things I keep putting off.

Tell me. Did you ever imagine for a second, somewhere over the last decade or more, that this is what your life would be right now?

If your life is exactly how you always imagined and dreamed, congratulations. I’d put you at less than 1 in a thousand.

And if you’re in the 999+?

This situation ain’t gonna change itself.

You will not just get your shit together one day unless you make a conscious, organised, goal and value-orientated and determined decision to do so.

Body transformations don’t happen by accident, we know that.

But nor do life transformations.

It’s time to wake up, to (metaphorically) slap yourself around a little bit if needed, and to recognise that this right now? This is it. THIS is your life. This IS your life. This is your LIFE.

What are you doing with it?

Do you look back on the past year and feel proud, content, happy? How about the past 30 days? The past day?

The truth is that your future is easy to predict –

You are the average of the past 30, perhaps 90 days of your life.

All odds say that you’re very likely to keep eating, thinking, moving, talking exactly the way you have over the past 1-3 months.

That you’ll bitch and moan about the exact same stuff ‘stopping’ you from creating a better life, and yet you’ll continue to put up with it. Just as you’ve always done. Just as most people will always do.

And as you think about this, don’t you just want to cry a little?

Because you know and you know that you know, that the way you’re living right now is not how it has to be. 

You are fully aware that you have what it takes to change your body. And every damn part of your life.

Which means that like it or not, you have to admit that the only reason you haven’t yet done so?

Is you.

But perhaps reading this doesn’t make you want to cry at all. Perhaps it fills you with a feeling of absolute power, certainty and determination. A sense that this moment right now will be your turning point.

The moment you look back on at having started to live true to you, and to chase your dreams no matter what it takes.

The truth about motivation and living an inspired life is this –

It happens when you decide to make it happen. And you don’t build motivation by sitting back and resting, recovering from your busy life, and hoping that the next day you’ll wake ready to go.

You build it by doing what it takes. Every damn day. By being outcome focused rather than reacting – as most people do, and always will – to how (you think) you feel.

Too tired, too busy, too stressed, too scared to step outside the norm or your comfort zone?

Maybe.

But are you too much of any of those things to choose them over choosing your dreams?

If the answer is yes, you’re one in the 999+. Which means nobody is going to judge you at all. You’re normal. Life is hard. People get it. It’s okay.

Except, when it’s not.

Most people will die having never achieved their big dreams or goals.

Join them, if you choose.

Or choose, if you will, to be the 1 in one thousand.