If We Only Focus On What People Have Achieved, We Will Overlook What They Have Overcome!

At the beginning of last year, I shared a quote about how someone can overlook what another person has overcome if they only focus on what they have achieved. The main reason I had created this quote was due to how people had responded to me, when I went into what I did in the past.

After I left school I didn’t have a clear plan, and a few years after I left, I ended up getting into self-development. A lot of my time and energy went into trying to understand myself and working through my own baggage.

The Years Went By

During these early years, I also ended up going to college a number of times and I had a number different jobs. I often had moments when I felt incredibly angry and hopeless that, while the people I knew were racing forward in their career path, I had no idea about what I was going to do with my life.

From the outside, it just seemed as though I was just wasting time by going to college and doing jobs that wouldn’t lead anywhere. The truth was that I had no idea about what I was going to do with my life.

One Focus

However, what I did find incredibly fulfilling was reading books that would allow me to understand myself better. I was like a dog with a bone; I wasn’t going to stop doing this and focus on something else.

But even though I was committed to this, I didn’t have a lot to show for the work that I had put in. I was making progress but it was slow and I wasn’t sharing anything at this point; I was having conversations with people, yet I hadn’t written any articles or books.

The Priority

So much of my time and energy was put into keeping my head above water; I didn’t have the urge to create anything. The energy that went in to this objective would have allowed me to achieve something significant; there is no doubt about it.

When I wrote my first article at the end of 2010, I took the first step of what would soon give me something to show for all the work that I had been putting into my own development. Once I was in a position where I had written hundreds of articles and had books out, the responses that I received from others were generally different.

Final Thoughts

I believe that the amount of energy and strength that someone needs to elevate themselves from a very low place or to overcome a big challenge, can be about the same amount of energy and strength that is needed to achieve something significant. The trouble is that while it is relatively easy to see when someone has achieved something significant, the same can’t be said for when they have overcome something significant.
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Taking this into account, it makes me think about how important it is for someone to honour their own path and not to get caught up with what other people think. We all have our own path to walk. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk