You don’t have to be the greatest at any one thing. You don’t have to be an Olympian, you don’t have to play in the NBA, and you don’t have to win a Grammy. You don’t have to make a million dollars a year, drive the most expensive cars, or wear the nicest clothing money can buy. You don’t!
But if “Today” you’re better than you were “Yesterday” you’ll find yourself on the way to success, prosperity, and happiness; however you define those things for yourself. Some people like money, some like great relationships, others like to travel; whatever your vision is for those things, you can make it happen by being better than you were Yesterday.
Every living thing on Earth always grows to its maximum potential. At any point and time when a living thing aspires to be less than it can be or less than it was, it is no longer growing, but instead dying.
Every living thing but humans reaches its maximum potential
If you put a gold fish in a fish bowl it will grow to the biggest size it can while still living contently. If you take that same gold fish and move it to a bigger tank, it will get even bigger. This is a form of growing to your maximum potential for the environment you’re in.
Almost everything on earth has an innate environment it cannot do anything about. It cannot change the direction of the wind, when it rains, among many other things; yet, all living things still grow and thrive to their maximum potential in the wild.
You will never see a lion sitting around all day, taking the day off, because he had a hard day at “work” the day before.
You won’t see a monkey take the day off because he was out late with his friends.
You will never see a giraffe say to itself one day, “Well, this is tall enough, I think I’m going to take a break from growing now”
In the wild, not being the best you can be, always has severe consequences.
The lion will go hungry, the giraffe might not be able to reach food it needs to eat, and the monkey might get eaten.
A human condition.
Humans on the other hand, due to their “superior” intelligence, if superior is the right word (seems kind of funny since we are the sickest species on the planet), have adapted their environments and structured society in a way that they don’t continuously have to work to survive. No other living thing has something called a vacation.
Oftentimes, this makes humans more complacent than they should be. We no longer have to forage for food everyday or take down a buffalo in a hunt, we no longer have to worry about getting eaten by a predator(some people do and some probably should be), we no longer have to worry about the weather as we sit safely in our shelters, and if you live in America; you don’t even have to work because the government hands out food stamps and housing assistance to those who can’t, don’t, or even…won’t.
How to tell if your mission of life is finished
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that your life here isn’t finished. There’s a simple test to see if it is: see if you’re still breathing, if you are, it’s not done.
Don’t be an exception to life; be better than you were yesterday.
This mindset is not limited to one aspect of your life, things happen, there’s nothing we can do to change events that have already transpired (I am however working on a time machine to remedy this), but we do have control on how we react and what we do about it when things happen.
We can be immobilized or we can continue on in the best direction possible. But no matter what, you simply must be better than you were yesterday; not in any one thing, maybe not even overall, but definitely in “some” thing, even if that “some” thing isn’t your “main” thing.
What to do about it
Read a book, try something new, exercise, or help someone in need; it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you grow from it.
You may be familiar with phrases such as: “Live, Love, and Learn”, but what you may have not understood is that in order to live, you must love and learn. And in order to love, you must learn. Start learning and you will have a finer appreciation for things so that you can love. Start loving so you can share one of the greatest gifts of life with those around you, and when you accomplish both; then you can truly start living.
“Learn to Love and Live” “Live to Learn and Love” “Love to Learn and Live”
Live a life well spent instead of spending your life without living.
Make life a perpetual syndication of gradual self-improvement every day and you will be amazed with what you can achieve.
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