Success and What It Takes

Success is one word that we all have many different opinions and meanings for. Some people achieve it and some just only dream of it. Some long for it and some are driven by it. Some worry about it and some gloat in it. I have a different affinity for success and a different appreciation for it.
My appreciation for success comes not from a need or want for praise or pats on the back. My appreciation comes from how hard I work at what I want to achieve. My one fear in life is being average. We all are born average, but that doesn’t mean that we have to live an average life. Average work yields average results. No one ever attains eminent success by simply doing only what is required of him. It is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines success. To me, being average means that you are just as close to the bottom as you are to the top. The difference between being great and being ordinary is that great people take everything as a challenge and therefore stay on their toes, but ordinary people see things either as a blessing or curse. Average people hope a lot. They hope that everything works out, rather than making things happen the way that you plan for them to work out. They hope more than they work. God gives every bird a worm, but he doesn’t throw it into the nest. Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.
I guess you can say that my drive is different than most. I guess you could say that in learning myself growing up till now, I saw that if I outworked everyone else, then I would always be the best at whatever I took on. Every day, I try to work harder than I did the previous day. I find myself as my biggest competition, being that I don’t ever compete and won’t ever compete with anyone else. People are never your measuring gauge. You are. I refuse to be outworked. I don’t give 100%, I give 150% because if you only give your best, then you are not receiving your full potential, because just when you think you can’t give anymore, that is when perseverance kicks in. Your perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work that you already did. If you consistently work harder than you did the previous day then, you will get consistently better results. That means through the hard days, I work 3 times harder, just to achieve my goals. It’s crazy that I don’t sleep good some nights because my mind doesn’t shut down, I still pursue my goals in my dreams. Whether I am tired, sick, or even if it seems as though I am making no progress, I still give 150% because that is a temporary feeling or emotion. Emotions are what stop the majority of people from achieving their goals. They go off of what they feel at a certain point rather than powering through the hard times till the end. Progress hurts at times and won’t always be all roses or fun. You have to fight your bad days to deserve your best days. Smooth seas never made a skillful sailor. Success, to me is the time when you don’t feel like doing a certain thing but you do it anyway to achieve your goal. Life isn’t going to always deal you a great hand of cards. The thing that the wise have learned is to play the cards that you have long enough until you can be the dealer and shuffle your own cards.
It takes many hours, days, nights, weeks, and years of hard work to produce some results, depending on how big your goal is. The one key that I learned is discipline. You have to look further than your nose to years down the line rather than looking for instant gratification. It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures. Most people see only the ending result rather than the long days of hard work and long nights of staying up pursuing your goal. They don’t see the commitment that it took you to take it to that next level. Most people are not willing to commit to what they want to achieve. They give up because they say that it will take a while, or that it is impossible internally within themselves. Self doubt can kill your dreams and goals. If you aren’t willing to commit to something and risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. Difficult things take a long time, impossible things a little longer. Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway, so you might as well put that passing time to the best possible use. Success can only come when you know the difference between the P’s: power, position, perseverance, pressure, prayer, and patience. Success is neither power nor monetary. Power is the position that you have achieved as a result of the perseverance that you had when you went through the pressures and stress to get to your position of power. Prayer is what always gets you through it all in the hard times and patience is what you need to handle the hard and trying times, and to wait till your time comes and receive the fruits of your labor that you sowed hours, days, nights, weeks, and years ago. So the question isn’t only what is success or what does it take, but rather are you willing to be your own question?