And… I’m back!
I didn’t go anywhere. I’m just back with a “quote of the day”, which I haven’t done in quite some time!
There’s a line from a book I read this year that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while now, and anytime something sticks in my brain a little longer than the normal length of time a thought’s in there, I tend to think it’s sticking for a reason.
I’m positive this one has ammo.
I read (okay, only read half of) The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss sometime in March or April of this year. Ferriss is a powerhouse of a human and decades ahead of his time. He’s truly a clever and innovative thinker, liver, and doer. I commend his determination and intention on living his own damn life. On his terms, in his ways, for him. It’s brilliant what this man has created for himself.
Early on in the book, he wrote a sentence that forced me to stop reading and grapple with the magnitude of what he’d just said. It read:
“Firepower up the wazoo and no trigger finger.”
God, that sentence kills me. Kills me!!
Here’s the thing…
If you have all this potential. All this yearn for more or for different, and you’re sitting there, telling yourself whatever it is you tell yourself to suppress that ambition long enough to silence it, you are standing in your own way.
Stop. Doing. That.
Stop. Selling. Yourself. Short.
That is an exact formula that’ll lend to you waking up in 40 years and wondering why the hell you didn’t just go for it when you had the chance.
And “chance” is a loose term here.
There is never going to be a perfect time. Never. The longer you push off what’s begging you to give it life, the more it will eat away at you. Maybe you won’t feel it in a year or two or even ten, but at some point, you will. You’ll be envious of your neighbor or your cousin or even worse, your child, for doing what they truly, truly want to do, and you don’t want to be that person. You really don’t. You literally get one shot at living this life. If you waste it being someone else’s idea of what YOU should be, you’re not living your life. You’re living someone else’s. Or you’re mad at the world and everyone in it for living theirs.
If you have a dream, a goal, an idea that is burning inside of you, honor that. I feel like “honor” may sound weird, but that’s exactly what you need to do. You need to realize that it is an honor to be given the gifts and dreams that you’re given. You could have been given anything. Any dream or strength and this one specifically picked you to live out its destiny.
It’s not selfish, it’s not frivolous, it’s not better suited for a rainy day.
You have to understand that no one knows what the hell they’re doing. We’re all making it up as we go along. We don’t get handed a “how to” guide when we’re born with a list of instructions and rules to follow. You don’t have to have it all figured out and know exactly where you’re going when you begin. You just have to pull that trigger and let the firepower catapult you out of where you are now.
Change is not something a lot of people enjoy or welcome, but you know what’s worse than change? Staying in an uncomfortable situation because it’s your “comfort zone”.
If you do not like where you are, you are not in your comfort zone.
Society has been lying to you.
Life doesn’t begin at the end of your comfort zone if your “comfort zone” is filled to the brim with things you want to leave behind.
Plain and simple— that is not your comfort zone.
Your healthiest, most effortless comfort zone is where you’ll live your best life.
You have got to stop telling yourself that what you want is not worthy of going after. That is a recipe for unhappiness.
The hardest part is pulling the trigger, but if you have the firepower, you’ve got everything you need sitting in the palm of your hands.
Once you realize that— that your life is waiting on you, not the other way around— you’ll realize that only you hold the power to change your life.
I pray that you honor the ammo you have mustered up inside of you. That you show up guns blazing at wherever you’re meant to be. Perhaps your aim is a little off when you first start shooting, but with firepower up the wazoo, you can reload time and time again. The only way to miss the bullseye every time is by never shooting to begin with.
Pull that trigger.
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