If You Would Give Anything

Would you give up your comfort for the discomfort of looking at ideas and beliefs you disagree with if it meant new choices and new results? Could you give up your strongest held beliefs?

Would you give up your experience and your ability to take the role of beginner? Would you assume the role of student? Is it possible to give up what you have learned to take in new information and gain new experiences?

Could you abandon the habits you’ve developed over a lifetime and trade them in for new habits, even if it meant devoting yourself to building them over the next 6 months? If this is what you had to do to have what you really want, could you?

Are you willing to try something new even if you risked failing—or even embarrassing yourself in the process of practicing something necessary to move you closer to your goals?

Will you give yourself the same advice you would give others if they needed to embrace the discomfort of ideas they don’t like, give up the competencies they’ve gained over time, develop new and difficult to run in habits, and risk failing and maybe even a loss of face if it meant they would attain their goals.

If what you are doing now was enough for you to meet your goals, you would already have those goals. You can have anything you want, provided you are willing to pay the price and persist long enough to have it. Part of paying that price means giving up your comfort, your beliefs, your experience, and your habits. It means you take on new information, even information, ideas, and beliefs you have resisted—and maybe vehemently and publicly opposed.

To have what you want, you don’t have to give anything, but you do have to give what is necessary—and what is necessary isn’t always easy to give.