“Be Kind, for Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Great Battle.” -Plato
I was speaking at a youth retreat for a school one time and a parent came up to met afterward and said, “Thank you for sharing your story. You have a pretty crazy story, man. When you first started speaking, I thought you were some yuppy kid who has never had any problems…”
We live in a world where it is easy to scroll down people’s Facebook pages, including my own, and to think that they are living the perfect life. Here are a few observations on that:
1.) Nobody has a Perfect Life – The people you look up to do not have it all together. The people you are jealous of do not have it made. You have no clue what their everyday life is like. It could be horrible! Nobody is going to post a picture on Facebook saying, “Here is a picture of me and my wife fighting! It’s awesome!” Everybody has issues!
2.) If people have a good life, they built it! – You don’t find a great life, you build one! A great leader once said, “Most people don’t lead their lives, they accept them.” Most people accept the “fact” that “they will never have a great life, a great marriage, a great financial life, etc.” If you believe that about your life, than you will never have any of those things, however, it does not have to be true. You can build a great life from wherever you are right now.
If people have awesome lives, they had to work for them! Everything worth having in life takes work:
- Great marriages take hard work
- Great vacations are planned by hard work
- Great careers take hard work
- Great opportunities come from hard work
- Great memories are created from work
Be willing to build a great life through hard work! It’s worth it!
3.) Never Judge Someone – You Have no Clue what people have been through! If you just followed me on Facebook, you may think my life is perfect, but what you wouldn’t know that:
- I graduated high school with a 1.6 GPA
- I spent all of 8th -12th grade getting high, getting drunk, and selling my mom’s pills
- My mom died when I was 17 years old
- I chewed tobacco for 4-5 years
- I struggled with pornography
- I got fired from every job I ever had until I was 20
- I weighed 248 lb.. in 9th grade
- I used to lie and steal all the time
- I am insecure in several areas of my life
- Laura and I broke up 100 times (slight exaggeration) before we got engaged. We worked through a TON of issues before we got married.
- I doubt my ability to make a difference with my life more often that I’d like to admit
Nobody is perfect. Nobody has the perfect life. We are all perfectly human, and to be human is to be perfectly imperfect.
Thoughts?
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