Friday, August 7, 2009

Prove yourself wrong. Again.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… do the thing you think you cannot do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this proven cycle: Accomplishing something I thought I couldn't do, or doing things I didn't necessarily want to do if left to my own selfish desires, can be incredibly revelatory. To the extent that I feel stupid for thinking I couldn't accomplish it before. Or lazy and selfish for not initially wanting to take the effort to do it. But any of these negative feelings are dwarfed in comparisons to the abolition of doubt, fear, and carnal selfishness such accomplishments provoke. How many times do I have to prove myself wrong to grasp the possibilities?

I can climb friggin mountains, write songs, excel at work and build things with my own two hands if I want to. Guess what? You can too.

If that's too much to swallow, start with my day-to-day philosophy: "Reach for the stars, and you won't come up with a handful of mud." (Leo Burnett)

That's safe enough, right?

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