Are You Willing to Pay the Price?

What are you willing to do to achieve the things you want to achieve? Are you willing to pay the price to see your dreams become a reality?

When it comes to making changes in our lives, those changes will require a price. It doesn’t matter what the change is, there will be a price to be paid.

This is all a part of growth. The challenges we face when making a change are what drive the exponential growth we will eventually realize…if we stick with it.

If your goal is to lose weight, then this will require you to pay a price. You will need to cut back on how much you eat, change the types of food you eat, and begin to work out regularly. 

The gym is full of people willing to pay that price. Some of them are just starting their journey, others have been on the journey for a while and you can see how it’s affected them. 

If your goal is to start a business, you’re going to have to pay the price in order to succeed.

If you want to tackle any mental health issues you might be dealing with, you’re going to have to pay the price to find resolution or solace from those things you struggle with.

Paying the price can be difficult in some instances, in others it may not seem like it’s that bad. However, regardless of whether it’s difficult or not, you have to stay committed and stick with it.

Most People Don’t Realize the Results They’re Looking for Because They Give Up too Early. 

I’ve given up too early plenty of times in my life…OR…I wasn’t willing to pay the full price, and therefore, I didn’t realize the goal or vision I had in mind. It fell to the wayside and if I look back far enough, I can still see it lying there.

This doesn’t mean everything gets left behind. Many of the prices I have paid for whatever goals, dreams, or visions I’ve had, even if they didn’t come to full fruition, have still been used as stepping stones to get where I am today.

Don’t ever discount what you consider to be a failure as a total loss. Many times those failures are making you stronger. They’re adding to your arsenal and you can apply them to something else in the future. 

Failures Are Merely Life Lessons. 

Start looking at them this way and watch how you begin to think differently about your world, about how you see yourself. 

You’ve just taken different classes than others and have to learn some valuable lessons about what you should or shouldn't do in certain situations.

One of the problems we face in our society is that things are too easy for us. 

That may sound strange because all of us can think of specific issues and struggles that we’re dealing with that aren’t easy. But think of it this way, we are the most comfortable generation that has ever lived, yet most people are unhappy, fearful, stressed out, or falling apart at the seams.

The comfortability of our lives has made us soft. 

Most of us have food readily available whenever we want it. We live in a shelter that keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We go to a store where all the food we could ever want is right there and we just throw it in our cart and then stuff it in a fridge at home. 

Most people work jobs that don’t require a lot of skill or manual labor. There are a large number of people who sit behind a desk staring at a computer screen for most of their careers. And yet, we aren’t happy.

We’ve lost our ability to remember what it feels like to have to fight to survive. Most people don’t question when or where their next meal is coming from. 

We aren’t fending off wild animals or running into battle with a rival tribe. We aren’t walking behind a plow pulled by a horse or an ox. We aren’t trying to create a shelter to keep our families warm so they don’t freeze to death during the cold winter months.

There aren’t extreme prices being paid to keep yourself and those you love alive. 

So we go soft. Now, somebody says something and it triggers us and hurts our feelings because we don’t have anything truly difficult to compare this to. 

This becomes our biggest problem, and to get over it, we’re going to have to start doing difficult things. We’re going to have to somehow break out of our mold and create something different for ourselves.

If we truly want freedom and happiness, we are going to have to make a change…and this change, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is going to require us to pay a price. 

Depending on what you want to change, that price will be different for you than it will be for me. 

Some people might find they're paying a similar price but don’t expect to get around your friends and find out you're all going through the same thing. 

You may feel like you’re completely alone during parts of this journey, and that’s okay. Because that is just another piece that will make you stronger. And if you really think about it, you’re not truly alone anyway, because we’re all going through something and trying to change something, so we can celebrate that together.

When it comes to paying the price, the benefit is realizing the dream. It’s seeing everything you’ve been working for come to pass. It’s believing in yourself and what you’re doing so much that you make your vision your reality.

Each Step Along the Way Builds Your Confidence and Opens You Up to New Ideas. 

It allows you to see the world through different eyes and experience things from another perspective. This is important because we shouldn’t go through life with the same ideas about the world from our teenage years through our elderly years. 

Think about how crazy your life would be now if you still thought the same way about the world as you did when you were fifteen years old. The reason we don’t think that way is because our experiences shape how we think about our lives and the world.

When you pay the price for something you really want to achieve, you begin to reshape your worldview quite drastically. 

You start to see that maybe things aren’t as difficult or complicated as you made them out to be. 

It doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes easy with no problems, it’s just that you’ve hardened yourself to a point where what you used to consider problems no longer are because you’ve overcome them.

It’s like doing push-ups. When you first start doing them, you can only do so many because your mind hasn’t hardened enough to overcome the pain or burn you may feel as your muscles begin to tire. 

In conjunction with that, your muscles haven’t developed enough to raise and lower your body beyond the threshold you currently find yourself under. After a while though, both your mind and body will change, and you’ll be able to do more push-ups than you thought possible.

If we go back to last week's newsletter, Stop Trying to Get Immediate Results, we begin to realize that paying the price and playing the long game go hand in hand. 

When we can align ourselves to be okay with our eventual change taking longer than we might think, while paying the price to achieve that result, we can oftentimes experience the change we’re looking for sooner rather than later. 

This doesn’t mean you’ve fully reached the desired outcome immediately, but rather you see the small changes that can begin to fuel the fire to achieve what you want.

Don’t Talk Yourself Out of Your Vision

Many people will talk themselves out of their vision because the price is too high. It requires too much work, or too much sacrifice to get the results they’re after.

When you feel like this, remember the words of the great Jimmy Dugan from, A League of Their Own: 

This is why so many gyms experience a flux at the beginning of the year just to have it taper off over the course of a couple of months. The price of getting in shape is often too much for many people.

It also takes time. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, I promise you that it will take time to achieve your results. 

There will be setbacks, you will run into obstacles, and there will be reason after reason to give up or quit. The truth is, many people do give up and quit. I’m one of them. You’re one of them. We’ve all done it.

But at what point are you going to say enough is enough, I AM GOING TO MAKE THIS CHANGE!

We don’t have to wait until we experience the ‘bottom-of-the-barrel’ moment. We can start making the change now.

In my personal experience, I fought to overcome depression and anxiety. 

I spent years doing this and looking back on it, it didn’t have to take as long as it did. But I didn’t have a reference point to guide me along the way. 

I wavered back and forth between the decision to give it everything I had and to wallow in my own self-pity. Just an aside here…wink, wink…there was a lot of wallowing…I mean, a LOT of wallowing.

Part of the problem was I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. 

BUT…I wasn’t doing everything I could to learn more about how to break free from depression and suicidal thoughts, and how to control anxiety. 

For a lot of the journey, I was blindly stumbling through my problems and slowly getting better because I wouldn’t really apply myself.

Eventually, I started applying myself more and more and after a while, I saw some huge improvements.

During this process, I spent a lot of time, money, and energy, and sacrificed comfort to free myself from the prison of my own mind.

I had to read books and listen to podcasts and then try to apply myself on a regular basis. I spent time going to therapy, talking to someone, and then had to apply the lessons to myself.

It Gets Easier Over Time 

After a while, I was able to see changes. The people around me noticed changes. Life seemed to be just a little easier to deal with. 

Now, after finding the tools and creating my foundation, if I have a depressed thought, or feel like my thoughts are taking me to a depressed place, I put on the brakes and reframe my thoughts so I don’t go down that road. 

It’s become very easy to do, but I’ve spent years teaching myself how to do that. I have paid a price for this freedom, but it is worth it.

With whatever change you’re trying to make in your life. You need to do a couple of things to help make this outcome more attainable.

1. The first is to go back to last week's newsletter, Stop Trying to Get Immediate Results, and read it again. 

   • You have to go into this with the mindset that you are here to play the long game. No matter how long this takes, you have to decide you won’t give up until you see success. This is also the first price you’re going to pay…time.

   • How much time are you willing to give yourself? Can you give yourself enough grace to spend as much time as needed to see this through?

   • This does NOT mean you just sit on the sidelines and hope things change or that your goals/dreams/visions magically come into being. It means you’re willing to work hard to achieve your outcome, and you’re willing to work hard for as long as it takes.

2. The other price might be financial. You may need to pay for courses, buy books, go to school to get a degree, etc. There may be a whole host of things you’ll need to pay for. Are you willing to find a way to do that?

3. Another price might be relationships. You may need to change your social circle. You may need to take a break from certain family members or friends who don’t seem to have your best interest in mind.

4. You might need to pay the price of being physically uncomfortable. 

I don’t like being cold. I am not a fan of cold water. So, guess what? Cold showers it is! It sucks. I don’t like it. 

However, every single time I do it, I don’t regret it. Even if it was uncomfortable. The reason why is that I paid the price of being uncomfortable, and I conquered a little bit of myself. 

I overcame that part of my brain that wanted to take the easy road and not do something difficult. When you do that, it feels good. You feel proud of yourself.

Maybe cold water isn’t a big deal to you. Great! What is a big deal? Go do that. Don’t be unsafe about anything, but if you don’t like snakes, go to a pet shop and find a way to hold a snake. 

If you don’t like spiders, make yourself get as close as possible to one of our eight-legged friends and study it. Look at its eyes. Watch it watch you. Notice how it moves its body and what it looks like up close. 

If you know you need to work out, go on that long walk or run. Go lift weights or do push-ups and sit-ups. Get yourself active and sweat a little.

Find what makes you uncomfortable and do that thing. See how you feel afterward. How did it feel to overcome yourself?

Overcoming yourself is all we’re really doing in any of these ventures. When David Goggins runs the Badwater Ultramarathon, he’s not trying to conquer the 135-mile race through Death Valley, CA…he’s trying to conquer himself. 

Remember when you pay the price, you are ultimately conquering yourself, and that voice inside that tells you you can’t. You’re not good enough, you don’t have what it takes. You’re shutting that voice down and allowing your true voice to break through and say, “I AM good enough! I DO have what it takes!”

We can all do things to begin changing our lives. But to start, you have to start.

If you know somebody who needs to hear this, please share.

Much love to you all,

Josiah

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