Breaking The Chains

I feel immobilized, a ball and chain attached to my wrists and legs. I am unable to move, not even an inch, unable to reach the first step of the stairs of life. I know the end goal but there is so much in between that is hard to push through. Since I was a kid I have always wanted to learn new things. I felt the need to take electronics apart and see what was inside, what made them tick. Sadly, I was not the kind of kid to put them back together. As I grew older I started to fall in love with building and making things instead. There was something about seeing the end product being exactly what I imagined it to be that it made me feel goosebumps on my skin. Although, I did hate the process most times. It was just so stressful, but at the end of the day the few that I was able to bare to complete were amazing. That being said, the stress did not make it any easier to be able to get to the end result. I started to realize there was probably something holding me back. An invisible ball and chain that I did not realize I had on me. I always thought it was a ceiling. A barrier society put to keep those on top and us below them. The unimportant. Just another gear in the machine. Years pass and I grew to realize. It is just on me. I am the one that created this imaginary ball and chain. There was a reason why no one else could see it. I imagined it. There is no ceiling that I had to breakthrough. There’s only me.

I started to think, What is it about me that was stopping me? Was I too scared to share the kind of person that I am? Maybe it had something to do with wanting to make sure things are perfect before I allowed people to take a look. I did enjoy showing my progress but I think throughout the years, hearing criticism on unfinished work was always a pain point. I already knew that the sculpture needs color, I already knew that the song was partly repetitive in that section, I already knew that my writing required some work. For goodness sake, it was an unfinished first draft. I started to realize that the problem was me. I was the one feeling upset when someone criticized my work. I was the one sharing the unfinished work. What was I expecting? A reward for a piece of work that only took half a day? I started to understand that I was being a child about it. Instead, I should have spent more time improving a few drafts before asking for constructive criticism. This way I would have been able to find my own voice and improve as a creator. That was it! That was the key to breaking out of my self-imposed chains.

There was something out there for me and I was the only one that could go get it. But I could feel that the only way to do so was by improving who I was then. I needed to stop comparing myself to what others had accomplished, and I needed to stop complaining and criticizing those that had achieved a certain status in life. Instead of wasting time, I listened to audiobooks and went through intellectual conversations on youtube done by CEOs and entrepreneurs. It was so interesting what I started to find out. They understand the value of time and hard work. They do not make excuses or try to blame others for their failures. They learn from their mistakes and build something new, better, and greater that surpasses all expectations. And not just that, some times just building a brand, or a product, basically creating something from nothing just seemed so amazing to me. The ability to force yourself to build something that you believe in, even when others do not, was something that made me feel gooses bumps on my skin. I know it may sound corny, but the ability to create something beautiful that touches people’s lives in a way that improves their way of living sounded amazing to me. So, I decided to break the chains and move faster and faster onto the next goal. I would work my butt off to grow onto myself and live my life in a happy way eventually reaching the next step of the stairs of life.