You will never become anything great or do anything in your life worth a damn if you seek permission from external forces. It is up to you to search deeply within yourself, to find what you truly want from this short life you’ve been given, and to take the appropriate steps to achieve it. The world has nothing planned for you other than to be a cog in already established channels. Your fulfillment and development are none of its concern as long as it gets to squeeze you for every drop of human capital it can.

What is your purpose? You don’t have one predestined for you. You have inclinations and perhaps even talents, but that doesn’t mean they are your purpose. Your purpose is not selected at random by some mystical force and given to you to discover at some point in your life. Your purpose is something for which you consciously decide to make emotional and physical sacrifices. If you’re not willing do that, it’s not your purpose.

You must harbor an intense disgust for those who tell you’re not capable of being what you wish to be. Who the fuck are they to tell you no? Do they have what you want out of life? Do they live a life worth mimicking? Or are they cold, bitter, and distraught souls who take pleasure in seeing others fail because it validates their own shortcomings? If they are close to you, purge them from your life.

Instead, keep and allow those in your life who are supportive and believe in you. Those who allow you to discover, experiment, and fail until you get it right. Those who challenge you to be better rather than berating you for trying. Those who give you solutions to problems instead of focusing on the problem. Those who notice when you’re beaten and battered, reach down, help you up, dust you off, give you a slap in the butt, and tell you get back at it. They are the ones who matter and whose loyalty, friendship, and camaraderie you must not only preserve, but cultivate.

What are your obstacles? Financial? Physical? Emotional? Societal? Each one can be overcome if you are willing do whatever is necessary. Not everything can be solved with a simple head-on approach. Some things take cunning and shrewdness, others require you to take risks, and some only require you win the war of attrition by stubbornly chipping away at it. If it was easy, anybody could do it. If anybody could do it, there is no greatness in it. Greatness is not reserved for the few who are destined for it, but rather for those who are willing to work for it.

Only you can bring out the best in you. Only you can decide whether you’re willing to deal with the emotionally rattling and jarring journey required to reach the top. Only you can motivate yourself to keep fighting and slugging away as you face one crushing defeat and failure after another. The pain and turmoil you will encounter once you decide to go on a path of greatness will test what you’re made of. It makes you go into the dark sections of your soul and heart and makes you question your ability. It will make you cry and hurt. It will make you doubt yourself. Each time you confront those parts of yourself, you’ll become stronger. You’ll remember the failures you had before and how you overcame them. You’ll remember those feelings of doubt and hopelessness that once consumed you and how you crawled out of it bloodied and wounded, but alive. You’ll remember that exhausting yet glorious moment of triumph you had when you made it out of the seemingly hopeless abyss.

Greatness will not be in your life if you wait for her to find you. Greatness knows her value and rarity and will not be won at a bargain price. She’s elusive, tricky, and hard to tame. Greatness does not go to those who seek approval, but to those who are bold, audacious, and decide for themselves they are worthy of possessing her. Greatness doesn’t believe in those who don’t have the confidence to believe in themselves. There are too many cowards in the world, and greatness feels no sorrow for them. Greatness is a stuck-up bitch with high standards. As with any bitch, only those with a strong force of will are able to wrangle her and put in her place.

~Raul Felix

Read more of my work on Thought Catalog.