Be Too Busy Doing, To Aspire To Be Anything
(The Art of Taking Action)
One of my least favorite and most misleading words in the English language is the word aspire. I hear it on a regular basis. I share a piece of writing, others tell me they aspire to write as well and every single time without fail, my first thought is why they don’t just actually write instead?
It’s not so much the word aspire itself I have a problem with, it’s how people use it. Aspire, by definition, is to direct ones hopes or ambitions towards achieving something.
While directing your hopes towards achieving anything worth while is nice, it’s simply not enough. So then we’re left with moving your ambitions towards achieving something, now we’re getting closer.
Ambition is defined as ‘A strong desire to do or achieve something, typically through hard work’. Which is my entire point. Don’t inspire, do instead.
Hoping without action does nothing but make us feel better for a fleeting moment. Faith is great but without right action on your part, it’s simply fiction. The universe has a way of helping those willing to help themselves first. And there’s a whole lot of willing people out there. People who were putting in the work while others were wishing on a star somewhere.
I’m not hating on hope and I’m certainly not denouncing anyone’s faith, including my own. A belief in something greater than myself is the only thing that keeps me going some days. A way of almost knowing, when things are at their worst, so much better is just around the corner. But even when my faith is the only thing keeping me going, the point is I keep going. Always Forward.
Millions of people aspire to greatness. A very small percentage of them take action towards achieving such. They get the desire part right and perhaps even have genuine ambitions as well. But then they leave out the most vital ingredients — action and work — and are left empty handed and hopeless.
My desire is to have those who spend all their time aspiring, take the first step instead. You can go from being an aspiring writer to a digitally published writer, today. It is my belief many people’s so called aspirations are really just their fear in disguise. A way of putting a positive spin on what they’re not doing but wish they were or even worse — what they wish they had did.
Though common, the most heartbreaking form of the word aspire is when it comes in it’s past tense. To have aspired to do something, means you no longer do. The desire and hope is gone and all too often this happens before any action was ever even taken. Before those aspiring ever truly tried becoming.
To aspire, is to throw potentially useful time to the wind. Time that never stops, moments you’ll never get back and will never be re-granted to you. Those mere moments become days, weeks, months and years before we have time to so much as notice. Then we go from the aspiring to once aspired.
When I aspired to be a writer it was because I was afraid to be one. Too lazy to put the work in, scared of rejection and failure, thought people would think I was out to lunch and their negativity on how it wasn’t realistic would crush me. I’d dream of writing, I’d wish and hoped I one day would — but I didn’t write.
To anyone who aspires to do anything, let me assure you you’re fully capable. Your potential is truly limitless. I’d hate to break it to you but the old saying “you can do anything you set your mind to” is true. People don’t want to believe it because not believing it is a hell of a lot easier than getting up and taking the first step of proving it is. Please, stop aspiring and start doing
