To move ahead, an arrow must first be drawn backward. So it is for us, too. We take one step forward and two steps back. We feel like we are in a perpetual game of catch up, make ends meet, and CYR (cover your rent). I hear you. I live it, too. For every success I’ve ever had, the have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of strike outs. Sometimes I’ve even gotten up to bat to find out that the whole game was cancelled and everyone heard the news except me.
It takes a certain resilience, a certain beautiful brand of lunacy, to carve our own paths, to buck convention, to make the career we want rather than take a job someone else creates. It is a grind, and a grind is what makes diamonds brilliant; it’s what turns wheat into flour that makes bread; it’s what helps aged spices release their gift of fragrance and flavor. The grind is necessary.
We can’t get ahead without first being behind. We can’t give the best that we have without first undergoing some refinement. Our refinement as entrepreneurs is rejection. Rejection shows us in no uncertain terms what really matters to us, and more importantly it shows us what we’re made of, just how strong we really are.
Life is hard in some ways for everyone, and for some of us it’s hard in many ways. We are all battling something, healing from something. We’ve only really got two choices – we can let what happens to us build us up or break us down. I prefer up.
Christa Avampato 