10 Year Plan: Anything Worth Doing Will Be Hard

Yesterday I wrote out the 6 core beliefs that I'm trying to focus the next 10 years of my life around.  Here they are:

1. Anything worth doing will be hard.
2. Do one thing at a time and one thing only.
3. The most important people in my life are the most important thing in my life.
4. Never let fear dictate anything.
5. Money is a tool.
6. Billionaire moments are everywhere.

The first on my list: Anything worth doing is hard.

You do only live once, and I want that life to count  I've always aspired to live an exceptional life and do exceptional things.  That's why I started this blog way-back-when in the first place.

The problem with being exceptional is this: it's hard.  Even my mundane, New Years Eve-like, goals take work.  Getting in shape, blogging regularly, and saving more money aren't particularly exceptional, and those aren't easy!

Then I think about some of the bigger ambitions I've aspired to over the years: Starting a non-profit or social enterprise that changes the world.  Being a life changing teacher.  Writing a book.  Those are extremely difficult to do. 

It makes sense, if it were easy to do exceptional things, everyone would do them.  We'd all be Mark Zuckerburgs running around starting social media empires.  By it's definition, an exceptional life is different than normal.  Everyone wants to be great, famous, recognized, etc.  But the majority of us, myself foremost, don't want to put in the amount of work necessary to achieve exceptionality.  We take the path of least resistance.  Why work hard to be a great writer, artist, athlete, what-have-you when something as easy as a sex tape can get you your 15 minutes of fame.  Or in my case, why work hard when you can watch Family Guy on Netflix when you get tired.

Exceptional people are weird,in a good way.   They have the discipline to do what is necessary to achieve their goals.  Without a doubt, I have not been exceptional in anyway at anything in the first 30 years of my life.  I have an assorted set of skills ranging from the decent (Being able to teach 7th graders about Ancient Rome), to the awful (golf).  There is nothing that I have devoted myself to being exceptional at, with the possible exception of Halo back in college.  

In the next 10 years of my life, I plan to change that.