If life is suffering, pick a good reason for it.

What are you willing to suffer for? Everyone wants the success, but not everyone will go through the pain and hardships needed in order to create the success they dream about.

You either choose the pain of working towards success, or you choose the pain of a life lived in compromise.

Everything we do is to either avoid pain, or experience pleasure. What we don’t realize, though, sometimes to experience that pleasure, we have to go through a lot of pain to get there.

In my line of work I have to deal with days with little sleep. Missing major life events of the people I love and care for. The uncertainty and risk of being self employed. I am horrifyingly in charge of my own destiny. There’s no one else to blame if things go wrong. No one to hide behind. I have to take full responsibility for when things blow up.

And, my goodness, how they blow up.

I’ve been without a place to live. I’m divorced. Been broke.

I’ve lost on every count that really matters.

And it’s all been worth it.

Those struggles have shown me what it takes to make the life I truly want for myself. Those stumbling blocks provided the raw materials I needed to build a bridge to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.

Without those experiences, I wouldn’t know what it means to fight for what I want, and do what is right.

The highest compliment I ever got was from a friend who said, “You know what I like about you? You own up to your mistakes quickly. You don’t try to hide them, you try to solve them.”

Integrity is a daily choice and can’t help but filter through to every facet of your life.

Every day I’m grateful for the opportunity to choose action instead of indecision and stagnation. I’m incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to experience this cosmic ride we call “being alive”.

I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the universe if I’m letting my life go on autopilot.

As soon as you stop being hungry, as soon as you don’t want to improve, as soon as you decide it’s ok to stop learning is the exact moment you die.

You might be buried years later, but I guarantee you that’s the exact time you die.

Life is movement.

Get going.