Do you really believe that you were put here to fail? I don’t. I believe we were put here to succeed, to achieve and to grow. But, to succeed means that we have to step out of line, away from the norm, and march to the tune of our own distant drummer, And therein lies the problem. Since success comes from inside of each of us, we have to move, act! So many of us are still behaving as we did in elementary school standing quietly in line waiting for your name to be called before you can step out of line. Just like in school when you can’t speak until your name is called, it seems that so many of us are still waiting for permission to be successful. There’s an old Jesuit saying that goes, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
When I look around, I see people waiting for permission to do all sorts of things. I see people waiting for permission to like themselves, waiting for permission to become healthy, waiting for permission to become wealthy, and sometimes I just see people waiting. Waiting for the voice of some long forgotten teacher to excuse us from the room, before we can get started. But, and hear this unless it comes from inside of you, that the voice will never come. As far as I am concerned, being here is all the permission any of us will ever need to become everything you want in life.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to be mediocre, we expect mediocrity and we get it. On the other hand, success and excellence seems to require expressed approval and permission from someone else.
We are success organisms and we succeed by setting goals and making plans for their completion. That presses on the mechanism and all you have to do to fail (or be mediocre) is to stop pressing on the success mechanism. Failure is automatic. Mediocrity is expected. We’re raised to be mediocre, told not to step out of line, made to memorize facts, been graded on a curve and if we move ahead too quickly, told to slow down so that we stay with the pack.
But, we also live in a world ripe with challenges and we have the talents to face them and succeed and grow bigger and brighter, if only we would give ourselves permission. That fact alone should convince us that no voice is forthcoming and that our presence here is all the permission we will ever need to succeed.
Mack Newton
Copyright Mack Newton. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the expressed written consent of the author.
