5 Years for the Rest of Your Life: Success Takes Time

The Art of Inspiration

So many people quit going after their dream because, after a few months of hard work, they don't see any results. Even worse, some people just don't want to put in the hard work, to begin with. We live in a world of instant gratification, where we can type a few words on the computer and we get a list of answers. And if for some reason those answers take more than 1.2 seconds to load, we start to complain that things are taking too long.

I was the biggest offender of this, so many times in life I found myself frustrated with where I was, but I never truly took the steps to move out of that place. I fell victim to "excusitis... " I don't have the time, it can never be me, life is too unfair, I don't have the money, and so on the with a laundry list of excuses.

When I did get moving I would put in the work, but just enough to say I went for it but it didn't work out. I wanted success to appear in my life just as fast as Google can provide you with up to date information on the weather. I wanted it now.

The reality though my friends is that success rarely happens overnight. Even the so-called overnight successes tend to have a history of trial and error that they went through way before they ever became a success. We don't see the years of them falling and picking themselves back up. We only see the product of them finally having a breakthrough.

With that said, I want to share a few concepts that have helped me on my journey, and I hope they help you as well.

1) If you are driven, life will be a constant struggle. Why? Because when you are driven the moment something becomes comfortable, you step outside of that zone and reach for the next goal. A truly driven individual will live in a perpetual state of discomfort. Learn to thrive in discomfort and your life will take on a completely different meaning, I promise you that. You will build more confidence, you will walk and talk differently, you fear less and live more. Most of all, you will continually learn, grow and evolve until the day you die.

2) You will without a doubt fall many times. Notice I didn't say fail, you only fail when you give up. But if you have a large enough dream it will take much trial and error to accomplish it. You only fall so you can become stronger, so you can learn how not to do things and get one step closer to finding out how to do it right.

3) It will not happen overnight and it will not be easy. If you are not ready to put your heart, blood, sweat, and soul in something, you should turn off this podcast, forget your dream and go be like everyone else. But if you understand that true excellence takes years and that your dream will only come true if you are relentless, you are heading in the right direction. Success takes a unique blend of passion and sheer insanity. Because you need to be absolutely insane to get knocked down so many times and keep getting back up. And in order to do that, you have to be an incredible amount of passion for the things you do.

Your dream is the prize for never giving up. We did not come here to have a dream that is just that, a dream. We came here to pursue our dream and to face our challenges, most of all, we came here to win. And it won't happen today, and it won't happen tomorrow, but if you put your head down for the next five years and go after your goal every single day. If you are willing to sacrifice the person that you are for the person that you want to be, if you have an insane drive that will stop at nothing and an unbreakable passion. If you get up every time you fall, if you learn and evolve daily. If you change your plan because it didn't work out but you refuse to change your goal. If you see it, live it, breathe it every step of your life... You will win.

Go win your dream, stay inspired!!!

-Raf