My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [55]
Today I understand how these challenges, sucker punches, setbacks, and disappointments prepared me for the dream I now live. Starting over in a small town taught me what it was like to not fit in and how to make it work. Being short in high school taught me how to use my wit to make up for my height. Learning about death early helped me appreciate my own life. Doing manual labor—washing dishes and mowing yards—taught me that I preferred to work smarter not harder. Getting rejected from so many colleges landed me at the college where I met a mentor who changed my life. Publishing my first book myself launched me into an entrepreneurial world of fascinating people and adventures that I cherish. Yes, life is not fair—and thank goodness for that—because when we recognize it’s not fair we can choose to make it work anyway. This choice to succeed, no matter the curve balls and sucker punches, is what determines how far you go.
How you choose to deal with life not being fair directs the course of your life. Some people use it as a handy excuse to play the blame game. They blame everything and everyone but themselves for their misfortunes and unhappiness. These finger-pointers force themselves to stay weak, uninspired, and spin their wheels. They become bogged down in their own excuses and can become old and bitter, unless they realize they have the power to make another, wiser choice about how to deal with life being unfair.
Christina is a perfect example of someone who has stalled out because her excuses won’t let her move forward. Her dad said he’d pay for her college and then backed out leaving her with mountains of debt. Her younger brother got arrested for drugs, and she had to bail him out, literally. Her mom is bipolar and goes from acting like a mom to acting like a stranger.
Christina bitterly blames her dad for not keeping his word and forcing her to work two jobs during college. She blames herself for her brother’s decision to hang out with thugs. She blames her mom for not being there when she needed her most. Her family, she says, is so messed up that it has consumed her life. She blames them for standing in the way of her dreams. It’s true she’s had some terrible luck, but will anything positive ever come from her choice to be so resentful and act as if she has no control over her life?
TRYING TO WIN BY QUITTING AT HALFTIME
Other twentysomethings realize life’s not fair, and rather than make the effort to create excuses they react by simply refusing to try. They may even have the audacity to tell themselves, “If I don’t really try, then I never really fail.” What a load of junk! The only way you can fail in life is by not acting on your dreams. When you don’t pursue your dreams with all you’ve got, you sabotage your chance to live a life of meaning—no matter how you try to put a positive spin on it.
Twenty-six-year-old Zack is one of those “I’m successful because I’ve never failed” people. He brags about his big plans for the future, and how he’s going to be rich, famous, respected, and admired. He acts very egotistical and boastful about where he’s headed, but it’s all a facade. It’s the only way he knows how to put a positive spin on being unemployed, sleeping in his childhood bedroom, and having a curfew—at age twenty-six! Anyone who hangs out with him for more than ten minutes sees through his act and into how empty he actually feels. Yet, it’s been four years since he graduated college and he has taken zero steps toward living his big talk. At this rate he’ll be thirty and still pretending he’s a success, even though he sleeps in a room with posters of his teen idols on the wall! Choosing not to