When it’s time to step up and fight!

When the circumstances around you are tough, what are you willing to do for the things you truly want in your life? How do you react when you are hit with a huge serve of roadkill (aka a shake up or shake down) that you were not expecting? Do you take it on the chin and just sit back and say, ‘oh well that suck’s, maybe next time I'll read the signs better and my ‘driving’ will be more skilful’. Or maybe you are so busy looking around and critiquing how everyone else on the road reacts that you take the focus off your own goals and lane?

Maybe this has happened recently in your career, relationships with your family, your friends, or your partner. So, think about it, what are you willing to risk? What I’ve witnessed is that way too many people are happy to just get out of the drivers seat, and bobble along the side of the road in mediocrity. They aren’t willing to take the wheel and constructively and strategically aim for what they really want. Then as a result, they blame themselves or others for not finding their way home.

Fighting for what you want is very different from complaining about what you’re not getting. I’m not talking about whining to your friends and family that you’ve been ‘wronged’ and that it’s so unfair. I’m not talking about complaining and gossiping about others. And I’m certainly not talking about blaming. What I’m referring to is getting behind the wheel of your own destiny, taking accountability for you and being willing to put your right foot on the accelerator in the good fight. A fight that you believe is going to have a positive impact on yourself and others around you.

Sadly, some people aren’t even willing to give things a good crack to get to their preferred destination. They are not even putting up any sort of fight for what they believe is right. They aren’t reflecting, they’re not giving constructive feedback, and they are not going after what they believe to be true and what they want.

Then there’s other people who stay so focused on their own path and just ‘stay in their lane.’ This popular phrase came up this week in a meeting and it made me reflect on what this means to me, because ‘staying in your lane’ is not necessarily a black and white decision.

Yes, in some ways I agree it’s important for us to stay in our own lane in life. For example, we have no right to have a manual for others or to assume that our way is the only way. Afterall, we’re all learning how to be better as we travel down these roads of life.

What I’ve discovered though, is that there are many degrees to which we can and should stay in our lane. From what I’ve experienced, neither extreme is good. If I choose to be unadventurous and I very strictly stay in my own lane all the time, then I don’t grow and learn from my mistakes. However, if I constantly change lanes and never really focus on what I want, I get lost, end up going in circles and it slows down my overall progress.

In my opinion, the best way to go about this is to stay in my lane until I find that it’s too comfortable, predicable, and safe. this way I can learn what it takes to master an area of competence and then venture outside into new lanes through collaborations with people who have expertise in those areas and can add value in new and interesting ways. Once I have proven competence and capability in my domain, I feel it’s much more likely that that people will want to hop into the passenger seat with me in cross-disciplinary collaborations. Overall, I think this is a healthy, efficient, and sustainable way to increase my breadth and depth. Also, I really value and get excited by professional collaborations with people who have complimentary skillsets to me. In order to attract people who want to work with me, it really comes down to how much value I can provideand the impact of mutual benefit.

So now, I just want to ask you, what are you willing to do for the things you truly want in your life? How many important pitstops are happeing in your life currently and are you actually fighting or standing up for yourself in these critial incidences? Should you be putting more of an effort in to get your desired results?

I don’t think I have ever regretted fighting for something I want, even if I didn’t get there in the end. This is because when I put my heart and soul into driving my life somewhere and I really fight for it, and put effort into it, and then I still don’t get there... I can still walk away from that fight (with my ass kicked) and know that I did what I could. My belief is that we must believe and continue to fight for what we want, because we are all worth fighting for. They say that the secret of getting ahead is getting started, either way we’ve lost nothing. Once we have our map and we know where we are headed, nothing should stop us from driving towards where we want to go!

This week was one of those tough one's, and internally I had to fight for myself. To me that means I had my own back. I still might not have clarification on my route and exactly where I’m headed, but I'm ok with that. For me it's believing that this is happening for me and that I will get the outcomes I need. The important thing is that I’ll have me, and I know that I gave it my best effort and that I laid it all on the road to do my very best.

At the end of your life, I promise you, you’re going to appreciate every time you got in the drivers seat for yourself. Every single time you made that effort to fight for you. Your journey after all is far more important and always way more revealing than the destination.