改善弁
We all need a kick in the seat of the pants, at some point in life or another.
It could come from a teacher, a friend, or our boss — or a loving boot straight from our mother.
It might not feel good, and we might feel some shame; all those things should quickly pass.
But there’s one thing for sure that we’ll look back and say: that we deserved that kick in the ass.
Most goals fail for the same reason.
It’s easier to give up on yourself than it is on other people.
That’s why we have accountability buddies and life partners and coaches and personal trainers.
The other way to succeed is to make your goals bigger than you. That could mean doing it for the environment, or the animals or the unjustly imprisoned, the maltreated, or the lost and forgotten.
And it could mean doing it for the people that you love: your family and your community.
Whatever it is, it’s a damn sight harder to give up on something when other people are relying on you to turn up.
That’s why you reading this is so important. Thank you!
Make a goal that’s bigger than you, and it will bring you everything you ever wanted.
When I was but knee-high to a grasshopper, Dad would often pop his head into whatever bubble I was in at the time and spin a battered and yellowing paperback onto my lap.
“Here, read that. You’ll like it,” he would say.
Then he’d wander off to build a homeless shelter or a school or a choir or whatever else he was crafting for the world at the time.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realize that he was crafting me too.
Those books prepared me for things I would encounter later in life that there are no lessons for; love, drugs, adventure, luck, betrayal, and death.
Those ageing and comically-fronted tomes of pulp fiction changed the way I thought about the world.
They opened my eyes to the possibilities and the madness and the complex, crushing beauty of it all.
And I wouldn’t be me without them.