Diary Opened

June 29th 2017

How do you achieve success? 

I've googled that question many times and shockingly there has been no crystal ball to outline a pathway to clear and easy success for me. 

I've always felt the only way people find success is by carving their own path. One that has never been seen before, one that appears incomprehensible to others. A dream out of the impossible. So how do we get to be those people.

I feel like one of my fatal flaws could be caution. I once said to a friend that I wished I was impulsive because when the thrill of new things, new dangers arise my instinct is to plot a course out. An escape. And I fear that it costs me some great stories and some new experiences at the very least. 

I bring this up because I'm looking for a sure way to find success before I take the plunge and just try. I'm trying to seek out answers that no one truly knows before I start to give myself hope. I want a plan. I want a dream. But at some point all that research and every time I google that same question ultimately it doesn't count for anything.  Maybe action is the secret to success. I wouldn't know, but there's always that possibility. 

I'm scared of the unknown and the new. I'm scared of losing. I'm scared of disappointment. Those are three things that stand to cripple me. I get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think of the possibility of tomorrow. That imaginary place where reality has to hit and you have two choices. One, to roll with the punches. Or two, get beat down. Maybe either way may end in failure, but sometimes it's better to have tried. To have put forth some type of effort. 

I look at people. The creators. The inventors. The "visionaries". But what course did they take to become those people? And where can we sign up?

Creators of apple, google, netflix, youtube. What about social media, or companies. Actors, athletes or writers. What does it take to be capable? Capable of climbing that long mountainous road towards success?

I've tried researching, dependency, hoping others would help me, and even more recently indulgence, trying to avoid the face of success and effort all together. 

Nothing in life is supposed to be easy. Everything is supposed to be earned, but it becomes tiring and tedious especially when you are searching for something. And you don't even know what that "something" is. 

It occurred to me today that our society is highly judgmental about intelligence. But what if that isn't even a necessary key for success. What puts intelligence above creativity or innovation? 

I want success, but I'm even afraid to go back and read that notebook with all my dreams in it. Maybe dreams are supposed to be amorphous, ambiguous and undefined. And the only way to transfer those dreams into reality is by taking action anyway and giving them definitions in reality.