I find myself in a rather rare position these days. For years, I have been saying that a monumental breakthrough was coming in my life, but year after year passed and I found myself in same situations repeatedly. I felt as if I was on hamster wheel just going in a perpetual circle and making no progress. The word breakthrough began to hold no meaning for me except something to say on New Year’s Eve to describe what I hoped the coming year would bring. The day I finally finished my undergraduate degree was an important milestone in my life and what I thought was the beginning of that big breakthrough that I had been talking about for years. However, not soon after it was as if I found myself back on that damn wheel going nowhere as fast as possible. Now I find myself on the cusp of the greatest adventure of my life so far and I’m reluctant to even claim the victory that I have worked so hard to achieve. Over the years I have developed what I call the “loser mentality” and what I realized is that I had become so accustomed to loss and disappointment that I don’t know how to respond to winning. I spent a year trying to get into this unique and prestigious MBA program and it’s hard for me to even tell people about it. Today I find myself in a position of promise, unlimited potential, endless opportunity for success, and a chance to travel the world as few have the chance to. Yet when people ask what I’m doing these days, my response is just “I’m going back to school, I just got accepted in to GA State’s MBA program.” My response should be I just got accepted in GA State’s Global Partners MBA Program! Which will take me to China, Brazil, France, Brussels and many places in between. I got here by studying countless hours for the GMAT, learned enough Mandarin Chinese to pass a spoken language test, and made my way through one of the toughest interviews of my life. But for some reason I can’t bring myself to say that and why? Don’t judge for this, but I was watching Oprah’s finale episode and she was talking about the one thing that all of her guests had in common was the need for validation. She went on to say that, everyone deserved the opportunity to have what they want out of life for the simple fact that they were alive. I had never thought about life in those terms. You mean just because I was born I deserve the opportunity to be happy and live the life that I want, who knew?!?
From that day I began to ponder two things; validation, entitlement and how they are related. What I came to realize and except is that God made who I am and for good reasons still mostly beyond my comprehension. He gave me everything I needed to realize all of my dreams and so much more. He didn’t create me to fit the standards of this world, but to be the man He envisioned I could become and anything or anyone who tells me different is a LIE! Many times in my life I have felt entitled for expecting so much from myself and out of life; I believe that was mostly due to the fact that I felt I didn’t deserve to have what I wanted. I felt that way because I thought I was inadequate and inferior. What I now realize is that I do deserve to have what I want out of life and to live my dreams; and if I don’t then who does? I also realize that it’s not out of a sense of entitlement to feel that way. It is fueled by a drive to live up to the potential that I know is inside of me because if I let all the talent that I have been blessed with go to waste then I really will have proven myself inadequate .
My misconception of taking pride in my accomplishments versus boasting is one of the main reasons this is an even an issue for me. All of my life I’ve felt the need to dumb myself down and that problem persists today. Yesterday I read a daily inspirational message entitled “Don’t Downplay your Blessing”. That message really put things into focus for me. Take all of the hard work and effort I put into this endeavor out of the picture and what I realized is that I’m insulting God’s work by not acknowledging the results of all of His planning, which is the real reason why my future looks as bright as it does right now. He orchestrated so many people and events so that I would meet the necessary people at the right time and show up at the right places when I needed to be there. So how dare I not tell everyone about what He has done with my life. It’s starting to really become clear that my life is about to soar to heights that I had always hoped but always doubted were possible. In order to live this life I have to let go of fear, doubt, hesitation and embrace the man that God is molding me into. It’s time to live the life that I want, be who I want to be, live life to the absolute fullest and keep pushing towards my dreams until they are my reality.
