How do you find your motivation in the morning? Do you put on a favourite song? Throw a bit of butter into your morning coffee? Push-ups? Sit-ups? A little run? Picture the laughing faces of your enemies? As you defeat them?

We are all trying to achieve the same results, namely success. There is no secret sauce – we just need to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. The product is really the process. Some methods of achieving goals are more successful than others. We are all playing a very similar game, whether we choose to accept that idea or not. The difference is those who show up to the pitch and those how don’t.

As I sit here in front of my glowing companion Mr. MacBook at 5am wishing that I was still lying warmly in bed, my realization that the struggle is real is acute. However, I have a family to provide for, a business to grow, a life to live. It won’t just happen all on its own. Getting the job done means putting in the work. And the choice is mine, just as it is yours.

Sure, we all have things holding us back. Maybe no one believes in you. Maybe you have a job to go to that provides you nothing more than a meagre living. Maybe you just lost someone close to you. Maybe you don’t know if you’ll survive today. Maybe you bear an inexplicable and crushing dark weight that won’t ever lighten. Maybe everything is, or at least seems, wrong.

Nothing anybody else says can make it better. In this life, you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The path to success and freedom will require you to walk no matter how sore and blistered your feet are. You have to work. Every. Single. Day. You have to grind out a better existence. The work won’t always be hard, but it has to be meaningful.

You have it inside you to do this work. You were created with all the right stuff. The world was created by people just like you, people who follow their dreams. Artists, inventors, creators. We never know when we are on the precipice of our greatest moments. Maybe today is the day. Carpe diem.