Tom Bilyeu is the founder of Quest Nutrition and his show on YouTube, Impact Theory is well worth subscribing to if you are an entrepreneur, or dreaming of becoming one. Tom said:
If you have any interest in doing something that will be remembered, pick one thing and do it with force
My immediate reaction to this was that I don’t want to choose one thing, I am a multifaceted person, like everyone else. I have many things I want to do, many income streams I want to create, many desires I want fulfilled. How do I choose one thing? And then it came to me. The ‘one thing’ needs to be me. It’s about who I am. It comes back to defining myself. Who do I want to be? Do that with force and I will have what it takes to make my dreams come true. It’s about resourcefulness, not resources. If you need resources then you are dependent on others to get things done, if you are resourceful, then you already have everything you need to make it happen. I need to create what I want, not wait to be chosen, or the right opportunity. If I wait to be chosen I’ll still be sitting on the bench at the end of the game. If I wait for the perfect opportunity I’ll still be waiting on my death bed. You can’t steer a rocket on the ground, you have to get the rocket off the launchpad and that takes force.
Why pursue our dreams with force? Because we will face obstacles when we try to pursue our dreams. Obstacles may come because we need to course correct, they may also come simply so that we can overcome them and grow from the experience. After all, if you’re going to pursue big dreams then you’re going to need to be the sort of person who can make big dreams happen. You need to be able to dream and execute, not just dream. 40 years ago a friend talked about the obstacles in our lives being like wooden alphabet baby bricks that we stack up for babies in order for them to have the joy of knocking them down and improving their motor skills. She likened it to the obstacles in our own lives, saying we should view them like baby bricks – not something to thwart us, but something to overcome and in doing so grow in our abilities to deal with difficulties. That struck a chord with me then and it has come back to me repeatedly over the years when facing difficulties, which is why I still vividly remember that simple mental image 4 decades on.
To paraphrase Tom Bilyeu:
You have to be forceful and determined in order to push past the mountain of obstacles that are going to try to stop you. You need clarity of purpose, something you could summarise in a single sentence. Tie your identity to it so that when the obstacle comes before you, you can muster the force to overcome it
It’s easy to tie my identity to something, when that something is me. I think my ‘one thing’ should be resourcefulness. Checking online I found 3 definitions of resourcefulness, each adding to the wholeness of what it means to be resourceful:
Google dictionary: Resourcefulness: the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties
The Cambridge dictionary: Resourcefulness: the ability to make decisions and act on your own
Dictionary.com: Resourceful: able to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations, difficulties, etc
Adding my own definition, it would have to be: Resourcefulness: Finding all the resources I need on the inside, in the Big Sue part of me, to deal with every situation I face and to grow fully into the person I have the potential to become.
I was a big fan of Sir John Harvey-Jones MBE, former chairman of ICI, when I was younger. He wrote a book called Making It Happen, which I think is now packed away in a box somewhere. The one thing you need to ‘make things happen’ is resourcefulness. I have to make things happen, adapting where necessary, but certainly not giving up when the obstacles are in reality just like baby bricks – there to be knocked down and to upskill me.
So my clarity of purpose, that I can sum up in a single sentence will be:
I am resourceful, forceful, and I will make it happen
Coming next: Standing up for myself
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