How Bad Do You Want It?

My Surprise Mentors

Each summer I travel thousands of miles from home to a small conference center in the countryside of Lithuania. It's there that I meet my friend Simon Black and we spend four days with dozens of young men and women from all over the world at his BlackSmith Liberty and Entrepreneurship camp. While Simon and I are the instructors for the event, I leave feeling like the kids taught me as much as I taught them. And they have a big lesson for you today.

Craig Ballantyne

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."-- Dale Carnegie 

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By Craig Ballantyne

They came from all over the world. Fifty young adults from thirty-five countries, often traveling thousands of miles, pay their own way for an opportunity to better their future. Each accepted to our exclusive camp only after submitting impressive video applications demonstrating how they would add value to the world.
It amazed me how much effort the kids put in to get there. Two of the attendees were only 18 years old and yet they too paid their full fare to Lithuania. One was an American girl - the type you'd expect to be a typical entitled teenagers. And did I mention that she looked like a model? However, she didn't pay her way there by doing commercials or photoshoots. Her story is much more interesting than that.

This young woman from the mid-west saved her way there by working several manual labor jobs, many of them on farms. Once she had acquired enough capital, she bought herself a doublewide trailer and rented it out to her first tenants. It was with this entrepreneurial pluck that she was able to attend our camp over 4,700 miles from home. Others came from as far away as Bangladesh, Australia, and Uzbekistan.



Many of these kids had accomplished more - and traveled more extensively - by the age of 22 than I had by the age of 30. I was truly inspired by their boldness, and it brought me hope that there will be great leaders for the future.

"But," you might protest, "They're kids. They don't have any adult problems to deal with that can hold them back from traveling the world and going to your events."

And you're right. They are just "kids". Most of them didn't have adult problems (although two attendees did have young children at home). But as an adult, we must be mature enough to take personal responsibility for our problems. If you have something holding you back, then you, an adult that reads ETR, should know that you alone are personally responsible for where you are, and for where you are going, in life.

If you have problems that prevent you from traveling or attending seminars and events that will advance your career or education, then it is up to you to solve those problems, not to make excuses. That's what you'll do if you want it badly enough.

You see, everything in life simply comes down to how badly we want it. We all have obstacles. There are roadblocks on everyone's path to success. The simple fact is that some folks give up before they've exhausted all the ways to eliminate these obstacles. Many others, sadly, don't even bother trying at all.

But the bottom line that a responsible adult must accept is this...
It's you that got yourself into this mess, whatever this mess may be, and it's only you that can get you out of this mess. You can't rely on anyone else. You can't depend on the government to save you. You can't wish your way out of trouble. You can only take the high road, which is often the hard road.

The path to success, the road to riches, or whatever avenue it is that you seek does not promise an easy journey. However, it is often a simple journey.

In the Tough Mudder races that I've run, the event is simple. You just follow the path laid out for you. But it was not easy. There was always at least one, if not two or three sadistic hill climbs. If you've ever climbed a hill, and I'm sure you have, you know it's not complex. You just put one foot in front of the other. But it's remarkable how such a simple thing can be so hard.

Such is our journey in life, business, relationships, and self-improvement. The success stories of yesterday have left a well-worn path to the destination we seek. Unfortunately, it's up steep hills, through muddy swamps, over great barriers, and if you're doing a Tough Mudder, through obstacles booby-trapped with live wires, too.

If you want it badly enough you will not let these problems become an excuse. You don't quit from the frustration. You simply endure. You lean on others (you can't depend on them to be there, but if they are, accept their offer), you find a way to get to the top of that hill, and you find a way to clear the obstacles in the way of your success.

You keep going, and going, and going - when you want it bad enough. So...

• How badly do you want it?
• How badly do you want to change your circumstances?
• How badly do you want to achieve those goals that you've set on January 1st?
• How serious are you about getting outside of your comfort zone?
• How badly do you want to rid your life of the constant pain that comes with being unfulfilled?

There are few real limitations in our lives, few physical barriers that prevent us from at least trying to change. The obstacles are more often walls set up in our minds. We can just as easily make those walls fall down as we built them up.

It is we who tell ourselves what we can and cannot do. Sure, our spirits might get dampened by the news, the talking heads, those who are below average and hate to see us succeed. But we are adults. We are capable of rational thought. We can decide for ourselves what is possible and what is not. We don't need to leave the thinking and decisions about our life up to someone else.

On the other hand, for every one hundred naysayers, there is always a positive voice. There are great people out there that want to help you. They want to make it easier for you to accomplish your goals.

The kids that attended our BlackSmith Camp recognized this early in life. They looked around at what was in their schools, their communities, and even in their social circle, and they knew there had to be more. They also knew that there were others out there, just like them. And so, because they wanted it badly enough they found a way to get to a place where they could feel at home, even though it was thousands of miles away.

Fortunately for you, you don't have to travel halfway across the globe to find the same type of community that is happy to support you. Instead, you can find those people online, if you know where to find them. Luckily that's never been easier than it is today. There's never been more opportunity available to anyone in the world. It's all right at your fingertips, available to us in the comfort of our own homes.

So how badly do you want it?