You’re an ambitious person, aren’t you? I hope you are. Me too. We have dreams, desires, and goals, and we want to go after them. However, going after them isn’t enough, we want to attain them! Don’t we? Damn right we do!
Why else have goals if not to attain them?
But here’s the thing, people are going to try to stop you, they’re going to say it can’t be done, you’re the wrong type of person to do it (whatever it is), you’re a man, a woman, a black person, a white person, a red person, a yellow person, whatever, they’re going to say it and you have to press on and do it anyway.
People will try to shut you down. And if you do succeed, those same people will try to make you feel bad because you actually did what you set out to do and then they’ll say you’re ambitious, like it’s a crime.
Why? Because you had a dream and you went for it.
Isn’t that a son-of-a-gun!?
You’ve got to do it anyway. You’ve got to go for it no matter who or what tries to stop you. You’ve got to push through the noise and do it.
Want to publish your book? But a “friend” says you can’t do it without someone else picking you first, such as a traditional publisher. I’ve got news for you, that’s no longer true. You can self-publish your book today if you like. If you do, that same person who said you could not do it might become angry and call you names and tell you your book will never sell. Oh my.
What are you going to do?
You want my advice? Do what you need to do and let the haters hate. You can’t control them, you can’t change them, and whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not join them.
Hillary Rodham, in 1969, as a young 21-year-old, told her graduation class at Wellesley College that “The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”
At the time Hillary received roaring applause. But the reality is a lot of people didn’t appreciate a woman saying such things, especially a young woman. It can’t be done – “How dare she.”
Now she’s running for president of The United States of America and people are still saying it can’t be done, and since she might just actually succeed, they’re going to extremes to try to get her to give up and quit.
In fact, they’re putting her down for having ambitions in the first place, for striving to achieve them, and worse, achieving them. Now, once again, people are saying (a little more forcefully and openly this time): “How dare she!”
Is Hillary Clinton ambitious? Damn right she is. The question is, should she be? Yes!
We’re all ambitious, we all have dreams and we all want to do what we can to achieve those dreams.
Unfortunately, we stop ourselves before we get there, sometimes even before we actually start, either due to our own noise in our heads or the noise other people put in our noggins.
I’m not arguing for or against Hillary Clinton for President in this post, what I am doing is pointing out the difficulties she has that we all have, whether we realize it or not. Our challenges are not as obvious to others as hers are, because she’s on the world’s stage with a good amount of the population burning her at the proverbial stake on our TV sets every day.
You have your attackers too, who dismiss your dreams, and attack your integrity and everything you’re about for reasons you will never fully understand. (They probably don’t even understand why they do it.)
The harshest critic, though, that’s the one living within our own heads.
Having ambition is not a bad thing, it’s what drives us ever forward. You NEED ambition. You NEED to strive to reach your dreams. You NEED to believe in yourself to achieve them. The only one who can stop you, is you! Others will try, but only you can succeed at stopping yourself.
Hillary Clinton has her faults, everyone does, but what we can also recognize, and she deserves credit for, is that she has an abundance of tenacity.
We could all use a little more tenacity. (Click to Tweet)
The haters are going to hate, but it’s not them we have to worry about so much.
Take me for example, my brain can be a real jerk sometimes and all too often tries to stop me from publishing my work. I’m not a super confident person. So when I see someone being tenacious despite overwhelming odds, trying not just to stop her, but to tear her down, limb by bloody limb, and she keeps going, well, hell, I can do my part to achieve my dreams. Can’t I?
Can’t you?
Let’s at least try.
Strive to achieve your dreams. Do what they say can’t be done, even if the one saying such a thing is inside your own head. You and I, we too, can make the impossible possible.
Go forth, be tenacious.
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