believe – Patricia Elliott

Have you ever looked at Mt. Everest and wonder, “How the heck does anyone climb it?” It looks so daunting that you couldn’t even imagine trying. What if I was to tell you that double amputees and blind people have scaled the mountain and reached the Summit?

Would your view of what appears impossible change? Here we are, with all our limbs and with all our senses, staring at the mountain like it’s an impossible feat. We couldn’t even imagine taking on such a daunting task.

And when we see disabled people, many people look on them with pity because of what they think that person is missing in their life, but I ask you to step back and really examine the situation. Are they really lacking what they need in life or is it you and me?

Surfer Bethany Hamilton had her arm bitten off by a shark, but she went on and became a professional surfer. I just watched her story and it’s incredible. She’s surfed some of the most dangerous waves in the world and won a national title in 2005.

Erik Weihenmayer is blind, and he reached Everest’s Summit in 2001. Mark Inglis was the first double amputee to climb Everest in 2006. Arunima Sinha lost her left leg and had a rod inserted into her right leg after being run over by a train, and she scaled the mountain in 2013.

The first step to accomplishing something is to believe in yourself, believing that you can do it. If these men and women can do what seems impossible, why should you believe any differently for yourself? That alone is half the battle—believing that you can.

As we age, we tend to lose faith in ourselves and our abilities because of all the negative things we hear. People tell us that we need to be realistic, that we need to aim for something more doable so to speak. Some hear that they aren’t worth anything, that they won’t ever accomplish anything in their lives. We just get bombarded non-stop with negativity. So what do many of us end up doing? We give up. We begin to believe that our dreams are out of reach.

So we just do what everyone else is doing. We find a job, often one we’re not happy in, and live a mundane life. We get up. We go to work. We go home. We sleep. And we don’t really think about our dreams until we get close to retirement again—when we finally say, “heck with what everyone else thinks. I’m going to go for it.” And we create a bucket list of all the things we want to do. All the dreams we once had come to our mind again.

What if we started our adult life differently? What if we helped our kids believe differently?

Hanalei Swan

Caroline and Isabel Bercaw

Alina Morse

These are all kids who successfully started businesses when they were kids/teenagers. They had a dream and they went with it. Hanalei has her own six-figure fashion brand and her fashion is eco-friendly. Caroline and Isabel have a multi-millionaire bath bomb company. Alina created a sucker that helps fight cavities and became the creator of what is now known as Zollipop; also, a multi-million dollar company. Kid entrepreneurs are changing the way we all look at our lives.

We need to help them see that they can go after their dreams by going after ours. We have to stop telling them to be realistic and help them believe that they can do whatever they set their mind to. We have to believe that we can do whatever we set our mind to.

Think about Thomas Edison and the invention of the light-bulb. Can you imagine how many people were telling him to just give up after his first few hundred attempts? What do you think people were telling him by his 800^th or 900^th ‘failure’? The man tried a total of 1000 times to do it before he finally succeeded at 1001. That’s determination, people. That’s what we need if we have a dream.

So here are my top three things I believe you need to succeed in whatever you set out to do:

You need to believe in yourself;

You need determination; and,

You need patience.

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