Progress is not a collective movement. It is a series of individual ones that move the collective. When the cell phone was invented, everyone didn’t wake up on the same day and venture out to buy one. It took years but one by one we bought into 24hr personal access and now we can’t live without them. The same is true of the internet. We went and each bought our computers and signed up for $19.95 dial up service. Everyday people await progress. They are waiting for progress to knock on their door and say you’re next. It doesn’t happen like that. While there is inspiration, there is no miracle that comes along and transforms you to success. It happens slowly and it is an individual decision and not one of the collective.
Even in the worst of times men prosper. While so many remain unemployed and continue to lose their homes and other worldly possessions success plods on. I say this because opportunity is an elusive mistress. It is like being the only one in a 3D movie without the glasses. Everyone is oohing and ahhhing at the marvelous things that are happening on screen and you cannot see it. In order to see the opportunity you have to be ready to see it. You have to stop seeing the world as flat and build dimension into your static perception of the world around you.
Opportunity is not only elusive but it is also scary, it causes you to move from a place of relative comfort to a place of unsurety. You ever wonder why immigrants are so successful. They move to a new country with nothing and a generation later they are living among the most productive. They are wearing their 3D glasses, they can see the opportunity the people who have been there all their lives have failed to see. Not only have they seen it but when you come from a position of nothing it is no risk to move forward. That is to move from a place of discomfort to one of comfort is a “no brainer”, you have nothing to lose.
In being prepared for opportunity you also have to be prepared to be “different”. People like to say that if they are ever get rich and successful they won’t change but there are two contradictions locked in that statement. First of all if you are talking about getting successful, it implies that you are not successful now, so in order to become successful something about you will have to change. Secondly, we are not worlds unto ourselves, you may not alter who you are but people will alter their perceptions and expectations of you which will have an effect on how you behave.
So it’s a foregone conclusion that you will change. Let’s face it, in this world, the majority of people are not successful. People attain success in their own right but to be truly successful one must be “different”. There is something about you that is unique and distinct from others. At first glance this seems like a good thing but let’s look further. Social acceptance is a hallmark of humanity. Humans like to feel like they are part of a group. Any sociologist will tell you this is true. When you decide to become successful, you step aside from the group and act differently in order to achieve your goals. This might be going to college, refusing drugs, going to church or moving out of the neighborhood.
You might say, well Albert, what’s so scary about that? Well it’s not so scary if everyone in your peer group is doing it, but if you are the only one then it becomes a problem. “Who do you think you are?” “You think you better than us”. “You feel you special”. People become afraid of you and afraid of you defying the odds and becoming successful. They say to themselves “if Jimmy and I were born in the same place, with the same race, grew up in the same neighborhood and attended the same schools how is it that he has become successful?” There are only two answers that people tell themselves to this question and it defines whether you are a victim or fighter. The first one is, “he is lucky” and the second is “I must be doing something wrong”.
Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness but that is another story, I want to concentrate on the “doing something wrong”. People hate to admit that they are wrong and once you admit that you’re wrong, then you have to do something about it and therein lies the challenge. It is much easier to await for “luck” or “progress to come knocking on your door. It is much easier to blame your lack of movement on everything from slavery to a bad economy. It is much more difficult to strive towards your success in spite of all the obstacles that are there to hold you back. In spite of being form a single parent household or being Hispanic or black or a woman. This is what successful people do, they defy logic, statistics and the odds. Despite what anyone may say, you dedicate yourself to simply doing the next thing on your road to success, taking that next step because the next step is always the most important one.
Moving forward not only takes risk but it takes a lot of work. It’s not only a lot of work; it’s a lot of work on a variety of fronts. Its work on your emotional front, it may take changing your attitude and who you spend your time with including family and friends. It may be work on the financial side as you may have to reorder your priorities, get an extra job or forego something that you really want because it’s not in a direct path to your line of success. It is work on the educational and foundational side as you may have to go back to school to get the skills you need. Primarily it’s a lot of work on the time side as you will have to sacrifice a lot of your leisure time with friends and family to get there.
One thing that I know, there is no overnight success. There is no such thing. Even the lotto winners have been buying their tickets for years! The most important thing is to find those people with the 3D glasses and get you a pair. The first step is to believe that success and progress is there. No one goes trekking off to find a land that they don’t believe exists. You have to believe that there is success and that you are going to find it. It’s almost like magic how your vision clears and you see the world differently when you believe that success is imminent. Suddenly, challenges become opportunities. Things that were perceived as risk are now seen as ladders to where you want to be.
I am challenging you to see the world through your very own 3D glasses to embrace being different and seek out new opportunities. This is a challenge to success to do much more than those that came before you and when you achieve this success, as you will, remember to look back and make sure that you help somebody else find those 3D glasses.
