There Are No Shortcuts

Colin Powell said, “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”  Everybody has unfortunate circumstances, problems, and when my turn came, I accepted it, because hardship is part of life. With that being said, it is not your problems that matter;  it is how your problems positively impact your life that counts.  At the end of the day, our present circumstances are only temporary and will become empty and meaningless as we evolve. Ryuho Ho said, “No matter how tough our lives become, in the final analysis, we all pass on from this world, and all our problems die with us.  We are here to spend the time we have in accepting the problems this life gives us and using them to cultivate growth in our souls.”  In every problem, there are opportunities and solutions.  Nobody should succumb to negative self-talk, discouragement, or fear, that will only stunt your growth.  What the bottom line is, when life goes unplanned, you cannot complain, you can never lose hope, and you can leverage adversity to find unique opportunities to grow from your challenges and problems.  Having an attitude that you cannot achieve success because your life is hard is bull-crap because, to some degree, life is hard for everybody.  On that note, the people who are moving forward in this world are looking for circumstances they want, or they create them for themselves.  Put it this way. If you really want to NOT reach your goals, then you’ll go right ahead and succumb to your fears and discouragements.  You will fall victim to these and never resurface as a winner and succeed.  You always let yourself fail and never want to face your challenges.  You won’t accept that success is hard work, and you’ll always assume or hope it’s easy.  However, if you tell yourself you want it, no matter what it takes, there’s nothing that can stop you, so long as you always leverage adversity and continue to utilize the challenges thrown at you in life to grow.  You know and understand that success is never easy, and that to get there, it will take all of your strength, positivity, dedication, and determination to reach it.

 

 

 

 

 

All Circumstances Are Opportunities

Bruce Lee once said, “To Hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”  When you start from nothing and do not have any support, connections, or opportunity, you must become innovative and create favorable circumstances for yourself.  In every adversity lies innovative opportunities.  In fact, innovation, what pushes the world forward, relies on problems so that we can move forward as a society by solving them.  Look at Tesla, for example, the fastest-growing electric car company, relied on the fossil fuel and carbon emissions crisis for its success, and by taking advantage of that problem, they created a massive opportunity for themselves.  Ask yourself, “How can I change my perspective so I can leverage my circumstances into opportunities?”  Where there are difficulties, “ruts,” and seemingly impossible scenarios, these are circumstances in which you can either 1. remain stuck in them without ever moving forward, or 2. overcome them and emerge with new opportunities, ideas, and lessons.  If there were never problems in the world, humans would not be as advanced as we are today.  We would never have evolved beyond using spears to defend us, tents to house us, and horses to carry us.  Without problems, there would never be new solutions and ideas to effectively move forward as human beings.  The same goes for any situation. Whether you’re challenged by a particular goal that you want to reach, or you’re struggling to move forward in life, look at it as a way to grow. How can you learn from this? How can you use the situation to create an opportunity for yourself?  Everyone fights their own battles. Life isn’t easy for anyone.  Some people will face a few challenges in their life, and others will take on more. What it comes down to is how you progress from these challenges by taking advantage of them to grow and succeed.

 

 

 

 

 

You Can’t Give Up

Rhonda Byrne said, “There is no such thing as a hopeless situation. Every single circumstance of your life can change.”  When you lose hope, you are forfeiting your independence, purpose, and potential. Life will move on with or without you, and when you give up on yourself, you will become a pawn for someone who kept their dreams alive. For example, during the recession, I had a construction company going, and I was starving. I had to return tools so I could eat, and sometimes I had to sell tools for gas money so I could get to a job site. After spending my last dollar on marketing, finding my car to be repossessed, getting served with a court order to pay my residential lease in full and move out, I felt like the whole world was against me, and I wanted to give up. Feeling defeated, somebody told me, “Don’t give up. Right now is the time to establish yourself, when everybody else is closing down. People will see value in somebody who never quit when everybody else did.” Shortly after that conversation, I was called to give an estimate for two projects totaling $60,000. If I gave up, I would not have found financial independence, and life would have continued without me, leaving me in a rut behind. With that said, you can never lose hope because there is no such thing as a hopeless situation, and you can always develop success from failures.

 

Instead of dwelling on your failures and sulking about them, learn and grow from them. These give you a way to improve yourself, your business, and whatever you have planned for the future. Ultimate success never comes without failure first, It’s impossible.

 

 

 

Conclusion

There are three key things to take away from this discussion.

 

The first is that there is no such thing as an “easy success.” There are no secret ingredients. Success will always take hard work, dedication, preparing, and learning from failures. There are no shortcuts, and everyone who has succeeded in life will tell you the same thing. If they tell you otherwise, they are lying.

 

The second key takeaway is that every challenging situation presents you with an opportunity to learn, grow, and evolve. Regardless of what the situation is, the options are simple. You can remain in that challenged, pitiful state with contemplation, stress, fear, and worry, or you can surpass it by utilizing the situation for your own benefit.

 

Finally, the third is never to lose hope, as cliché as it may sound, but it’s true. If you lose hope, you “lose” altogether. It’s as simple as that. Holding onto hope will lead you through the pits of hell, struggle, and fear to the other side where success awaits you. Don’t give up, and you will reach your goals.  Do not give up, create opportunities when life does not go as planned, and take the long road to success because shortcuts do not exist.

 

Nolan McDonnell