The best thing you can always do, is the right thing. The next best thing you can always do, is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can always do is nothing. Do something.
Now, what does it look like? How do you ‘do something?’ Well, I’ve come up with three steps. One, take action. Two, stop making excuses. Three, fail… and learn.
According to the United Negro College Fund, in total, the nation’s HBCU’s generate $14.8 billion in economic impact annually.
We’re already in environments that are used to taking action and known for doing so. However, this did not happen overnight.
It started with small steps. Because small steps build consistency and consistency builds discipline— and believe me you’re going to need a whole lot of it in life and on this journey.
For example, summer time is approaching and I want to shed a couple pounds. I’m not going to sign up to run a 5K tomorrow. Instead, I’m going to take a small step and get a gym membership.
Go to the gym once a week, then twice a week because a lot of this journey is mental. When you see yourself doing something you start to believe that you can do it.
I would love to tell everyone to go and reach for the stars, but sometimes we don’t even know that there is a star to be reached until we take that first small step onto the journey.
Step two— stop making excuses. ‘You see I would, but I don’t have the time.’ Or ‘I was just too busy.’ Then there’s college student’s favorite, ‘I don’t have any money, I’m just a broke college student.’
The fact of the matter is, we make time for the things and people that are important to us and make excuses about everything else.
And if we were to cut back on some of our bad habits, we’d probably have a lot more money than we think we actually do.
At our finger tips every day, we have the resources needed to help propel us to the opportunities we need to be successful. But we need to start taking accountability for ourselves and control what we can control.
We come from a great history of people who had less money, less resources and the same amount of time and accomplished great things for us.
51 years and 21 days ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. This man did a lot of great things for us. But let me tell you one thing that he did not do… make excuses.
Step three— fail…. and learn. Michael Jordan once said, ‘You miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.’ Along the way there’s going to be a lot of naysayers.
You may take seven shots and miss all of them— remaining at zero percent. Someone may not shoot at all and also be at zero percent.
They’ll say, ‘We’re both at zero percent so we’re on the same plateau. Why should I even try?’ But that’s where the ‘and learn,’ comes in because if you miss that, then you miss the whole message.
We need to make sure that we are not scared to fail. When you fail, document how you failed, why you failed and think about it. Learn from your mistakes and grow from what you learn.
And the best part about failing is, you no longer feel the pressure to be perfect because believe me, nobody is perfect. Fail big, fail young and fail hard, but always learn when you do.
As I close, I want to challenge you all to do something. Take action with small steps. Stop making excuses about your time, money and resources and control what you can. And fail big and young but learn.
Place your hand over your heart and feel it. So long as that thing is beating, do something. Because the worst thing you can do… is nothing.
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