Mountaintops

As we grow up, I realized how we stop applying a lot of the little things we learned early in our school days that could be so beneficial to us now—like learning to read. After we learned how to read, we learned how to comprehend what we read—understanding what we read. Then we learned how to summarize what we read—put what we read in our own words. Well why don’t we apply these same principles now?

There is so much information available out here, that it is easy to get confused at which point to start. When you are trying to pursue your dreams, and live your life better than what you’ve been doing in the past, and make changes, it’s easy to get inundated with the question of how or where to start? So what do we do? We find quotes, we read books, seek mentors, question ourselves, question others, questions history, we even try to learn from the music we listen to whether it is gospel, R&B, rap, country, whatever your personal flavor might be. We cut things out of our life, we cut people off, and/or seclude ourselves from the rest of reality trying to catapult ourselves into the future of what we envision ourselves to be. Then we try to apply what we learned from these avenues of information to our lives, without ever really taking time to comprehend the foundation of the material, and being able to put it into our own words—and more importantly, our own actions.
What I have learned over the past few days is that no matter how much of other people’s success we read or hear about, it’s not our success. Please, don’t think that’s a naïve statement because it’s not. Although we know other people’s success is not our own, many of us still try to live vicariously through other people’s journeys. Trust me, I struggle with this daily because I read so much good material, helpful material, but it’s still not mines. What worked for one person does not necessarily mean it’s going to work for me. But that didn’t keep me from trying?

Where we get caught up is trying to apply other people’s steps to success to our own lives. But their path is different from our path. We don’t know the whole story; we only know what they choose to tell us. No matter how truthful someone may be they still don’t tell it all because they tell us what they perceive to be the formula that took them from point A to point Z, but if we really got a recount of their life, we may perceive it to be something different.
What is perception? Perception is our ability to summarize something in our own point of view. Our perception is based upon our experiences, and we grow in direct proportion to the experiences we have and the knowledge we attain and apply. Your direct application of what you perceive and are able to revise to fit your present circumstances and situation is what will make you successful. What John and Jane Doe did to overcome what you are going through worked for them. Don’t try to apply what they did, find the hidden concepts that helped them come with the solution and derive your own. What we do when we read—we grow, we learn, we get better. Just because you are not where you see yourself, doesn’t mean you are who you were. We don’t read for the answers, we read for the knowledge that will help us derive our own answers. We don’t read for solutions, we read the solutions and see how we can revise them to transform our own lives.

We live life to fuse three people into one—the person other people think we are, the person we think we are, and the person we really are. Don’t rely on others to help you become who you are, learn from their experiences and write your own story. Then tell your story to the world. This is the perpetual cycle of growth and development. How much you grow is up to you. Just stop trying to climb to the top of someone else’s mountain. Guaranteed yours is higher.
Be Blessed!!!