“Yes, but it’s not easy!!” would say so many faced with what it takes to reach – as if caught by complete surprise.
Who’s behind giving so many of us the impression that it is easy? Who set our brain up by default to believe that change is easy, that achievement is easy, that relationships are easy, that leadership is easy, that success is easy?? Or, and listen to that, that it was, one day, easier?! I would give anything to know!
So here you go, sit down, hold on tight: It is NOT easy!
It is not. It never was. If it were, today or any other day, standing out would lose both its meaning and its glory.
There was less competition? Maybe true. The market was much smaller though, transportation much more expensive, telecommunication much slower, knowledge very limited, and funds much more scarce.
There was less to worry about? Maybe true. Animals were a lot more predatory though, medicine and health very primitive, crops quantity very volatile and subject to location, weather and disasters.
It has never been easy – it has always been balanced. With more complex challenges have come more complex support systems.
At the end, it all boils down to what Alice gets as an insight in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland when she comes across a fork in the road and asks the Cheshire Cat in the tree for directions:
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
Alice: “I don’t much care where –”
Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
And then Queen of Hearts strikes another bull’s eye when she says to Alice: “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”
So, should you choose your direction, learn to play the game. Learn to play it exceptionally well, accept its challenges, allow them to strengthen you, upskill you, and shape you. Learn all that while you remain authentic, true to yourself and to what you’re mad about.
You did not choose to be here. And now you are. What role are you going to play: Main or stooge? Up to you.