One Thing That You Can’t Live Without: Challenges | Teen Ink

One Thing That You Can’t Live Without: Challenges

September 27, 2023
By ElaM ELITE, Surrey, Columbia
ElaM ELITE, Surrey, Columbia
310 articles 24 photos 117 comments

Favorite Quote:
“I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party; and I attended with my real face.” ~Franz Kafka


Every next level of your life will demand a different version of you. Why? Because life is about reaching outside you comfort zone. Acclimating until you are comfortable and then repeating the process. If you want to have more, you must become more for things to change. For things to get better, you must become better. If you improve, everything will improve for you in life. Every time we expand ourselves, we are forced to change in some way; evolve into a deeper version of ourselves. While the rest of the world is sleeping, you are wide awake. You are attacking the pinpoint to success. Everybody wants public authority, but nobody wants private discipline. Success does not always have to be loud. Sometimes it is necessary to be quiet.
 
The only way to guarantee failure, is by quitting. There is a saying, that to become something new, you must leave something behind. You must detach yourself in some capacity – remove yourself from the physical realm. The obstacles that we face are not physical. 99 percent of our problems are not physical, but mental. As you drive through that metaphorical ship through a sea of despair, the biggest deterrent is never going to be the anchor, or the headwind, or the bow line. It is going to be the storyline. It is going to be a narrative of a person navigating that single ship. It is interesting as you dive deeper and discover the protagonist’s issues.
 
Our first inclination when we are stuck, is to always point out the core attributes of our problems and somehow connect it with the world, in this predetermined life. We take our willpower and demonstrate it in different ways possible, cross our fingers and hope things work out. But that will be our lost gain, a losing proposition. It will always come crumbling down. It is not that the world pushes you offshore. It is yourself, who decided to embark on this voyage to success. It is not that the world weakens your confidence, it is you. You are not physically incapable of taking that first step or growing or evolving by daylight; no, you are not.
 
It is the very demons lurking in your mind; they are telling you that you are not good enough.
 
Because there is a cognitive dissonance between who we know ourselves to be, and who we want ourselves to be. That is the desert we must cross on barefoot. Each step, burning the soles of our feet ~ it is not the physicality of the steps, anyone can do that. But it is truly believing that you are worthy of the journey ahead. You must ask yourself:
“Is it because I can’t become something new?”
 
“Or is it that I can’t, I won’t refuse to detach from who I used to be?”
 
Your still tucked away in that small corner of that box you have been building for years and years and years. A substantial amount of life comes down to self-trust. To believing in yourself. It is not blind belief. It is not toxic positivity, where you close your eyes and cross your fingers, shutting the world off; assuming that everything will work out in life, because you are entitled to a great result. That inner trust of yourself to learn, to make the necessary adjustments and to keep moving forward along the way when life throws its own hurdles at us.
 
The next question is,
 
“What if I’m not ready to walk down that path?”
 
I would catch myself thinking that all the time. Here is the deal. For the big things in life, we simply never feel ready. There is not fully prepared; there will never be a fully prepared. We learn as we go. How could we know, all there is to know and understand all there is to understand when the path is the teacher?
 
Life is a rhetorical scheme.
 
Give yourself a chance. Try things. No. More things, bigger things, terrifying things. You see those posters of people you have hung up on your wall? They are not only world changers. They are the persevered ones. They are the ones who had determination when the world never harvested them a chance. They are the ones who never gave up. Yes, they failed, many times. Yes, they are not perfect. But setting aside all that, they never truly failed, because they never quitted. They are the classic lion mentality.
 
You must search for rainbows in the rain. Do not wait for the green light to go, because you are the green light. Your struggles serve a purpose, someday they will make the victory all the sweeter. If you are truly determined, every obstacle becomes a steppingstone for you. Because remember, never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, I promise you, that you will be successful.
 



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