Everyone grows up in a different environment, receives a different level of education, thinks differently — so naturally, everyone’s values, ideas and behaviour differ from your own too.
So with a hundred people there should be a hundred ways to live, a hundred different lives. And yet it is so easy to push your own values and way of seeing things onto someone else, wanting them to understand you.
The fight that matters most, when you set out to achieve something, is with your own heart
Working towards a large challenge right now, all sorts of things happen.
Money problems, time problems, problems with my own illness and body. And beyond those, “people won’t understand”, “opinions against the road I’m on” — a great deal of that conflict too.
There were times I could not hold down the irritation, the sadness, the feelings stirred up by what people said to me. But I came to realise: the fight that matters most, when you set out to achieve something, is not with anyone else — it is only ever with your own heart.
Meeting people who genuinely back you
There are all kinds of values in people, and worrying over things you cannot do anything about will never get you to your goal — what taught me that was meeting people who backed me for real.
I only learned afterwards that, in places I knew nothing about, people were cheering my challenge on and genuinely enjoying it themselves.
A flyer might get thrown away, but a postcard might actually be picked up and kept.
It was never “I’m doing you a favour by supporting you” — it was “I want to lift this person up, I want to help solve whatever the problem is, I want to encourage them.” That love came through.
A supporters’ T-shirt they turned each of their own ideas into, one at a time.
“Let’s wear this and travel the whole country!” — striking a pose and everything (laughs).
Living your own life
I have kept taking on challenge after challenge around the theme of “living my own life.”
And this time, what I have come to feel really matters is meeting friends who genuinely back another person, and having them push my back as I keep moving forward. So I want, with all my heart, to pay that back on a huge scale at the far end of this challenge.
Cherish, without reservation, the people who cherish you
People carry all kinds of values. Rather than fighting those values, or judging them, or trying to change anything, all you have to do is face and fight with your own heart.
Live where you feel at ease
Lower your goal and you will fail; it is precisely by raising your goal that success lies ahead — so I keep looking up.
A jump, for the first time in a while! Today is the youngest I will ever be for the rest of my life. Which is exactly why there is a reason to do it today, not tomorrow!
Thank you, God, for days overflowing with gratitude.