Back to blogging!
Honing your Hustle
Recently I
finished a fantastic book, Quitter by
Jon Acuff. It is a great book that gives
some insight into how to get to your dream job.
Through the book, Jon teaches that there is really only one way to move
from your day job to your dream job:
Hustle.
It’s a strange
word, hustle. It is defined as “rapid or
energetic work” and “to be aggressive.”
Used negatively, though, it has a completely different meaning, usually
conning people out of money and even related to being a “professional.” I’ll leave that one alone.
But Jon’s
right. The only way to get from your day
job that you may or may not love to the job that you know you will love is to
hustle. It’s to really get down to it
and work it out. It’s honestly the same for
any goal. Goals don’t reach themselves,
and a goal you can reach by being lazy is a pretty crappy goal. Zig Ziglar says if you aim at nothing, you’ll
hit it every time.
Dream jobs are
nice, but not everyone has one. I’m
working on mine right now (in fact if you’re reading this you’re supporting my
dream, so thanks! Tell your friends!). But
I’m also learning to hustle on it. In
fact, as I’m writing this it is before 6 AM.
That’s when I write. That’s why
you probably see my posts first go up in the early morning and then again in
the evenings. I write in the
mornings. I also run in the
mornings. I’m talking early, like
between 4 and 5 AM.
Let me make
something perfectly clear, I am NOT a morning person, and never have been. I’m actually quite the night owl once you get
to know me. But waking up early has its
benefits. Like Jon Acuff says in his
book, when you wake up early you get up before your excuses do. Steven Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
says that the number one quality of effective people is that they are
proactive. They happen to life, not the
other way around.
Every area of
your life is the same. If you make a
goal and really hustle on it, you’ll catch your goal by surprise and Mr. Excuse
won’t have time to react. It’s easy to
come up with a million excuses as to why you can’t lose weight, why you can't get on a budget, why you can’t
write that book, why you can’t get that job, why you can’t save money, why you
can’t be successful. Because it’s so
easy, everyone does it. I constantly
hear people making excuses for their lives, but rarely do I see a person making
an effort to move forward and really hustle.
That’s hard and takes some real discipline.
So if you want to
accomplish your goals, which hopefully everyone does, here’s what you need to
do: DO IT. Work on it.
Work harder than the next guy on your goals and you’ll reach them while
he sits back and fails. Really put some
hustle behind your work and you’ll start seeing a real difference. Proverbs 10:4 says that the slack hand makes
one poor but the hand of the diligent makes one rich. While not fully biblical, the phrase “God
helps those who help themselves” isn’t entirely untrue. He gives us the ability to move forward, we
have to choose to move in His guidance.
And that normally takes a little hustle to get where you need to be.
No one
accidentally becomes successful. It
takes work and effort. But man, reaching
your goals is one of the best feelings you’ll ever have, I guarantee it. It’s just Common Cents, after all.
-Heath
PS: For my Hampton
Roads readers, my next classes are scheduled!
They will be in October and January.
If you like what you’re reading stay tuned for more info on my classes
and how you can learn some Common Cents the easier way from someone who had to
learn a lot of it the hard way.
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