This is the first in a five part series. Read the other articles here.

Get Your Story Straight

Where do you want to be a year from now? Five years from now? Ten?

Like many people you probably said you don’t know. But that’s not true, is it? You have a dream, you have a future you want to have. We all do. You may not want to talk about it, may think it could never happen, may even be ashamed to admit it, but it’s there. You know it. I know it. Somewhere in the back of your mind, when you dream, there’s one in particular you want.

It could be something as simple as becoming fluent in Spanish, or it may be a fully detailed idea of a future you’ve told yourself could never be, complete with pets, kids, you even know where all the furniture would go.

You’re not alone, it’s a particularly common thing. A great many men live out their lives and never even take the first step to realizing their dream. But some do. Some like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan (or any pro athlete), and many others did two things in particular that you are not doing. Two very important things that must be done so you can become the man you were born to be.

The second is making a plan. Anywhere worth going requires a map. Aimlessly wandering in a fog just keeps you lost (with a lot of bruises from bumping into everything). If there’s someplace you want to go, you need to plan out the journey. It’s something a great many productivity experts express often, and you probably already have a general idea of how to do it. It’s important, and we’ll get into it in the next article. But, there is one part that is just as important, and little talked about. And that’s the part we’re taking care of now.

Get out of your own way.

Stop holding yourself back.

Unless you’re 15 living at home with a strict curfew, you are the only one holding you back. You dictate your life, or you have given that right to someone else. It’s the stories you tell yourself, in your own head, which keep you where you are now – that keep you from striving for more. I know, I know, the system is against you, the mega corporations are keeping you down, like they keep all the little men down. Except, you and I know, they aren’t. Admit it, deep down you know all those stories you tell yourself are just BS. They don’t even know who you are. And I can fill this page with the names of people who tossed aside all those self-sabotaging stories and succeeded. Face it, you can too. Not to mention, there’s almost as long of a list of men who were actually held down, who rose up and succeeded. Rose up and inspired others to rise as well. Some even have holidays named after them, and are revered the world over. You think the system is trying to keep you down? There were actual, real, laws to keep Rev. King down. You think you can’t succeeded because you weren’t born rich? 90% of the wealthy in the USA were not born rich, and most of those were born poor. Think you can’t make it because you didn’t have a father? Wrong skin color? Bullshit. Barak Obama is calling you out.

Truth of the matter is, you are holding yourself back. You are the one telling yourself these stories. You’re the one making excuses for why you don’t even try. Not big business, not the wealthy, not the system – you. And we both know, you know it.

It’s time to rise. It’s time to stop holding yourself back. Yes, it will be hard. A man does not shy away from something because it’s hard. A man steps up and meets the challenge. Hardship and challenge are what forge us, shape us, make us the men the world needs. The men we need ourselves to be.

Once, just once, end the excuses. For one day stop telling yourself the same stories you keep repeating to keep yourself down. For one day, reverse the story, lift yourself up, and rise. For one day dream.

Then do it again the next day.