It has been a busy, busy week. I have been working with a landlord to fill a house and get it up to legal standards. I just about thought I had got it right when I discovered (thanks to Great friends at the Birmingham Property Meet) that I had missed a few key things so I decided to try and sort things out immediately. It all led to something of a slightly stressful week but hey, one step at a time and I am almost there. More important than that though is the fact that the house is full of tenants! Woohoo! I had been slightly nervous about that side of things but I chose to commit anyway and see what happened. Thankfully, it all worked out.
Which leads me to my thought this evening – The compulsion to succeed. Do you have it? Do you want to succeed at whatever you put your hand to? I do! What is success to you? It is surely not just about money. It is about doing things that give your life meaning and also doing things that bring value to other people’s lives. Those other people may only be your family at this stage in your life or it may be other people too.
I find that when it comes to success, there are possibly two extremes and a lot of different kinds of people in the middle.
- Some people have the compulsion to succeed
- Others just feel life owes them a living
Of course, there are those in the middle who just live from day-to-day, dealing with whatever life throws them.
With the compulsion to succeed, these people have an urging inside of themselves, a drive to do more, to experience more, to really go all out and accomplish something, anything. They have a passion that drives them on the inside. These are people like Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, Parents with a desire to provide a better life for their kids, everyday people with a desire to do great things. The compulsion pushes them on, makes them do things that others consider impossible. They fail a lot of the time but they win too. Their lives are more expansive as a result but it is certainly not easy in the early days. They serve a lot of people.
Couch PotatoThen there are those on the other extreme – those who think life owes them a living. They say things like ‘ I paid my taxes so therefore I should get this, this and this’, They moan about the way things are and the way the rich have all the luck. They complain about the immigrants taking all the jobs and it is everyone else’s fault all the time. They do not like their life but are unwilling to do anything to change it. They can be rich in financial terms, though in most cases, it is inherited or won. It is not something they have worked hard for. They serve no one and want to be served all the time.
Where do you fit? Maybe in none of those descriptions. You are content in your life and that is fine. Sometimes, I find myself longing to be like that as life would be considerably simpler if I could just settle. However, I am not that person. If I am not pushing forward trying to fulfil the passions inside of me, then I am passively moaning and complaining about this and that. I want to serve my family and I want to serve people. At the moment, my goal is to provide good housing for various people and also to assist people in meeting their financial goals. I have other plans for the future.
What of you? Who are you serving? Do you have a compulsion to succeed or are you just existing? Or even worse – do you think life owes you a living?
