So often we settle for less and rationalize it away. We are inches from what we truly want, but we stop and sit, or worse yet, turn back. It’s right there, we can smell it, taste it, and feel it, but we always seem to settle for less. Why do we settle? Is it because you think you can’t get it? Perhaps you think you don’t deserve to get what you want? Friends and family will turn against you? Afraid of what other people will think about you?

Never settle because once you start settling for less than what you truly want, you send a message not only to yourself, but to those around you that you don’t have it. You don’t have that “it” which serves to separate the great from the mediocre. You don’t have what it takes to get what you want and the masses will embrace you with open arms. They will tell you that it’s ok, that you tried, and that’s all that mattered and you will embrace them in return and shed tears of sorrow, but mark my words, you will turn your head back and wonder what could’ve been. What could’ve been.

You’ll find yourself in a similar situation in the future and look to one side, toward a sea of people who are opening their arms to you, beckoning you to come back to safety, in the arms of mediocrity, and on the other end, you see what you truly want, but you will inevitably turn back to the arms of those people, for approval of others is more valuable than approval of yourself. You will have given into their wants and your identity, your whole reason for being, along with it.

Who are you not to get what you truly want? Who says you can’t have what you truly desire? Note carefully that the people saying that you can’t are the ones who, not surprisingly enough, haven’t gotten what they truly desired. They too have been where you are, in that critical moment where you’re making the decision whether or not to grab what you truly desire and when they see that, they become inflamed with passion and entreat you to turn back, to come and live like them, eat and drink like them, and complain like them about how close they were to getting what they wanted. How close they were to opening that restaurant, to going for that dream job, to asking out the woman of their dreams.

Their plea to turn your back on what you want appears to be out of concern for your well-being, but their true desires are fueled by regret and fear. Regret that they did not have the courage to turn their back on mediocrity and step forward to greatness. Fear that you will take that step forward to greatness and prove to them once and for all that you can get what you truly want. Give substance to that fear by never settling.

It is all a test. Life is all a test to see if you choose the path of existing or living. The path of existence is default for all things on this earth, but the path of truly living is only reserved for those who never settle for what they truly want.

Therein lays the beauty of it all. We all want different things. Not everybody wants the wife and two kids with a two story house and a white picket fence along with a BMW in the garage. Some people want to live a very simple life. If that’s the case, don’t settle for anything less.

For those who settle for less than what they truly want exist only to consume space, time, and resources. To fill a void. Nothing more, nothing less.