Before you reject this article, you need to know I am one of you, this Younger Generation. My name is Daniel White.
I am 17 years old. I want to serve you. I want to share things with you that will make your life more energy efficient. I have a history of working through adversity.
When I was 12 years old, my younger sister died. This was rough. She deteriorated slowly over 11 ½ years. This experience made me realize that if you really want something it is not going to come easily.
From the time I was in 3rd grade, my “smaller than usual” stature became unignorably noticeable to my peers. So….they started the bullying and harassing.
At first I just let it happen and I didn’t change anything. Then I realized it would be a mark on my life if I let people walk on me. So I became determined to make my strengths stronger.
For instance, contrary to the recommendations of loved ones, I joined the hockey world. Others thought I would be an instant failure. But, having been blessed with excellent athletic genetics, I quickly moved up the ranks of the hockey world.
Within a short period of time I was able to play in a national championship! On the ice, I specialize in changing the game. Not only do I bring my A game, it spreads to my teammates, thus making our whole team amazing.
After all that hard work I was able to play on my varsity high school hockey team my freshman year. When I was 16 years old I moved to Germany where I played German hockey.
So, I want to share some of what I have learned with you, because I am not satisfied with only inspiring my teammates. I think of all you readers out there as my life teammates.
I hope you are inspired….
Problem
If someone from the past were to gaze into the future (our present time), they would see a generation of people who are cell phone addicts, self-absorbed, easily offended, sheltered, spoiled, and quite frankly losers doomed to fail forever.
So why is that what happened to all of the hard-working people of the past? The answer is simple, but deceiving.
We, the younger generation of this time, were failed by the generation before us. They gave us everything they wanted when they were young, but they didn’t give us what we needed.
We needed a better education system and a stronger concept of what money is.
And they needed to let us fail.
So what, just because we were failed doesn’t mean we should fail ourselves. Although earlier I called the younger generation losers doomed to fail, YOU are different.
If you are reading this, you are like most successful people in the past, you have failed over and over and over again. But, you are looking for a way to succeed and you have the power to break the cycle.
I’ll tell you how to do it.
We must do something about our losing streak. We need to fix ourselves. People aren’t meant to be built by others, we build ourselves. The older generation doesn’t deserve blame for our failings; they were just doing what they thought was best.
The first thing we must do is to change our idol.
Do you have the right idol?
An idol is someone you look up to, someone you strive to become. However, in today’s world, we have chosen the wrong people to idolize.
What I am about to tell you is life-changing and it’s something that I live by. Your idol should never be any celebrity, sports player, or any person with massive wealth, not even your parents.
The reason is quite simple: why limit yourself?
Although your now previous idols have most likely accomplished great feats, you can achieve much more.
Matthew McConaughey said your idol is YOU. In 10 years, your idol will always be YOU. Ten years in the future because your potential cannot be limited to some mere celebrity.
You are so much more; your potential is limitless.
In the end, you must ask yourself, are my thoughts limiting my potential?
What can I do to become the best me?
Do I blame others for things I can solve?
And where do I start?
Steps to becoming your idol
1. Take pride in your actions
It is often stated that you must take small steps to accomplish big things. To tell you the truth, that’s more correct than you could ever imagine. Every step, every accomplishment, every victory, as small as it may be, should be treated the same.
That doesn’t mean you have to party hard every time you do something, but it does mean you should be proud of every positive action.
The grip of depression is stronger than ever and because of that you must be able to appreciate all that you do.
The first step to success is failure, so failure should be learned from and you should take pride in every failure.
The reason behind taking pride in everything you do is quite simple: every person is a masterpiece and their own artist. Every artist knows that every stroke carries the same importance. This goes hand in hand with everything you do day to day such as brushing your teeth. Since you are taking pride in every action you will perform every step better, therefore, making you better faster while raising your confidence.
2. Know yourself
In order to defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy.
Unfortunately, your enemy is often YOU.
You may be thinking that I sound stupid for saying that. But think about it this way: if you get in a fight with someone, is it their fault for beating you or is it your own fault for not working hard enough?
Another example is if you decide against going on a roller coaster because it is scary, is it the roller coaster’s fault for being scary or is it your own fault for being scared of it? Now I’m not saying you have to be hard on yourself and blame yourself for every mistake because not trying is far worse than making a mistake.
What I am telling you is in order to become the best, it is necessary that you know your weaknesses and turn them into your strengths.
For example, in my life, I have constantly been belittled and discarded because of my height. I cannot control my height, just like you might not be able to control your feelings. However, I can control what I do with my height and use it to my advantage. This is why I started working out.
You too can “work out” your weaknesses and turn them into your greatest strengths.
3. Know others
People can be very difficult to get along with at times. Honestly, many people can be toxic and rude.
However, most of those people tend to have good intentions and are just misunderstood. That being said, even the best kinds of people may not be the right people for you, so make sure to always keep an open mind.
In order to counter negative people, you must learn about others. Not only what they are thinking, but their gut reactions.
Do not make the mistake of having a small group of friends and ignoring everyone else. You do not have to become close friends with them, but you should interact with many different people in the world. By doing so you will make it easier to work with people different from you. This will make it easier to be successful. That being said, people who are getting you into trouble and are hurting you should be discarded and ignored.
4. Surround yourself with winners
Becoming the best person you can be is no easy task.
In order to make it easier, you must surround yourself with people who constantly challenge you to push your limits.
The type of people you must hang out with to become great are winners. Winners are the people who work the hardest silently, they let their success speak for themselves.
In order to become a winner yourself, you have to outwork everyone. “The Rock” says that you have to always walk in a room and be able to say that you’re the hardest worker in the room.
Your friends should not be those that are easily beaten. They must be the kind that when you think they can’t go further, they are only halfway there. Friends aren’t just there to push you, they are also there for you to create good habits with. Think about the fact that your high school friends will reflect your future, so choose them wisely.
5. Immerse yourself in high learning environments
If you want to be successful, you have to be able to learn and grow.
Unlike what you’re taught in school, learning doesn’t always need to be closely related to math and science; it can be things like learning stocks or even how to sell products.
In order to become the best person you can be, sometimes that means filling your pocket with money. To put yourself in a high learning environment you need to surround yourself with people that can teach you about money and give life advice.
Another good way to put yourself in learning environments is to read books with your friends and family. Immersing yourself in a learning environment takes a lot of time and you need to be patient to see results but you’ll be surprised at how great you’ll be from doing it.
6. Set goals
Everybody knows that in order to truly work on yourself, you need to create goals. Not only do they have to be goals, but they have to be specific with a time frame.
Think of goals as the blueprint of your future self. Make your goals so ambitious it makes you nervous. It is best to write your goals down and check them off every day when you do them.
Another important thing you can do is to punish yourself when you don’t achieve those goals in a good way. What do I mean by punishing in a good way? Well, that’s simple. For all of my Naruto fans out there, you need to punish yourself like Rock Lee and Might Gai. For all of my non-Naruto fans, you punishing yourself would be like if you lost a rock/paper/scissors game you would do 500 laps around your block on your hands. Obviously, that is extreme and very exaggerated, but you understand what I’m saying.
Goals are important because they set standards and force you to commit to making yourself better.
7. Work on yourself
This part is simple: all you must do is give everything you have to reach the goals that you have already set.
Use your frustration and insecurities to power you instead of making you quit. Even though you are working harder than you ever have before, you are going to fail. But that’s a good thing.
Think of it this way, most people haven’t even tried to do what you are doing. You won’t always have the motivation to work, but instead of giving in to laziness, work anyways disciplines yourself. I promise that you will feel better about yourself, so stay with it and be patient.
8. Never look back
This is probably the hardest step honestly.
While you’re working on yourself, people are going to get jealous, they are going to try to get you to quit and you’re going to have to cut them out. It’s hard, but you must keep going on.
When I started my journey to become the best me, I’m going to be honest I lost a lot of friends and I wanted to quit. But looking back, I’m so glad I lost those friends because they were fake. Despite all that will happen to you, it is necessary that you leave all the pain and fake friends behind. You can never look back and when you do, never say, “man I was so stupid back then” instead say, “wow look at how much I’ve grown.”
Make sure to be proud of yourself for the work you are putting in to build your masterpiece. I’m proud of you for reading this and considering taking such a hard journey. It’s all worth it I promise.
If you would like to talk about this stuff some more. Text me…8017391581, and I am happy to text you back and talk about it.
To learn more about scientific and gospel principles to achieving self-mastery, download the free ebook, Like Dragons Did They Fight.