From The Desk of Maverick Brenton.
Subject: What is Your Mission?
There was a window above the bench that I was wiping down.
Outside that window, in the distance - you could see the sun on the horizon.
I watched it as I sucked in that fresh morning air.
Birds began to chirp, people were now walking their dogs and the world outside was waking up.
Standing on my toes, with my face against the old mesh that stopped the bugs from coming through the window**,** all I could think about was running off into that horizon before me.
I wanted to vanish quietly into the wilds.
I just wanted, to be free.
My watch said 5:45 am.
And it was a Saturday morning.
I had been cleaning bathrooms in the local pub since 2:00 am that morning.
Friday nights were always the worst.
People would shit on the floor and on the benches.
And often, drunk and drugged up, they would smear it all over the walls for me to clean off when I arrived early in the morning.
Sometimes when I seen this - I would swear and throw my mop at the filthy floor.
I would become angry at everyone and everything, especially myself.
And sometimes I would just pretend.
I would pretend that I was somewhere else - somewhere better.
Only a few months earlier I was sitting in a pretty cafe more than a thousand kilometres away, talking to my friend about becoming business partners.
My life was glowing with passion.
And possibilities of something I only dreamt about where now sitting in my lap.
Then, things _changed.
_
I made a few bad decisions.
And at the critical point where I should have pushed forward in faith - I gave in to fear, instead.
Then I wound up back where I started, with less than what I started with.
An old mentor of mine always told me that it’s very lonely at the top and I could see that this was true.
Between all the jealous old friends, the fake smiles and the scheming relatives after a piece of your pie - it would be lonely.
But..
When you’re at the top, you are at the top - you have money, freedom and power in this world.
Down at the bottom of the barrel, though, when your entire life has become a pile of ashes, it’s a very different kind of loneliness.
You feel helpless and you feel powerless.
You wake up in despair.
Your self-esteem crumbles.
You fall down into a world that few climb out of.
Resentment begins to set in and your facial expressions start to change - reflecting hate for anyone doing better than you.
Having a normal life, not even a successful one, becomes an impossible dream.
Unable to accept what is, you will start to fight against reality with your perception - using lies (rationalisations) as your weapon.
Lies that are created by the ideas inside your mind of how your life should be, and not how it really is - so they fight for their life as they are slowly destroyed by the truth.
Through those lies, you try and you fail to make the suffering of your reality bearable.
And you fail because the lies are just painkillers.
They’re a temporary fix.
So once they wear off - you will generally do either of the following:
A) You will slowly go insane as you accept reality and let go of hope.
B) You will end your life.
C) You will make the decision to change your life.
As I looked out the window and watched the sun rise on that winter morning - I was in a place like I just described.
I was going insane.
And the darkness was swallowing me.
In that darkness, two things saved my life: the great books that I had read and the idea that a better life was still possible for me.
If I didn’t have those things - I would have just given up.
I was living with what was left of my father - who had been mastered by his demons. I was out of shape. I had destroyed my relationship with my mother. And all my friends were a long way away - living their lives.
So it was just me in my lonely little world.
Just me at war with the darkness.
Just me and the hope in my heart.
That hope only existed because of the books I had read and the successful people I had studied.
From those two things - I had stories of triumph that I could relate to.
And I knew that life had more to offer than what I was currently experiencing.
So..
I held on to that hope.
And I used it as fuel.
I knew that other people had faced much worse and they not only got through it, but they went on to become great in this world.
So when I was cleaning other people’s shit off the walls and the floors of dirty bathrooms - I would put in my old earphones and listen to Les Brown, Tony Robbins and other motivational speakers.
I thought about the man that I would become.
And I imagined the life that I would build for myself: a life filled with purpose, meaning and power.
That vision that I created in my mind gave me a mission to accomplish.
And that mission, gave me a candle in the darkness that surrounded me.
Out of the three options I listed above - I chose option C.
I decided to change things.
So I quit that job and got a better one.
I moved out of where I was living and I fixed things with my mum.
I got in shape and beat every personal best I had in the gym.
Then I went on to work in construction: where I went from a useless sack of shit who didn’t even know how to use a drill - to running jobs on my own and working for myself on the side.
Years later, I put down the tools and decided to become what I always was: a Writer.
Now here I am - with a new mission and a new vision.
All it took to change my world was flipping a switch in my mind.
All it took to fix my life was one simple decision.
You remember that.
Back when I was in hell - it was hope that kept me going.
And it was my mission that carried me out of hell towards the vision I had created in my mind.
I never had to work that job.
I only did it because I was lost and did not have a mission.
The morning I developed and committed to my mission: I walked out the door of that place and went on to get exactly what I decided upon getting.
About three years later, sitting around a campfire with my two buddies - I realised how far I had come.
And boy ‘o’ boy.
It felt damn good.
What is your Mission, Fella?
If you want to be happy, you need a mission.
You need a vision.
You need a goal.
An ideal that you chip away at each day.
A crystal clear picture of who you want to become that is burnt into the walls of your mind.
And you need this mission, because wandering through life with no mission, is not a good strategy for living life.
You gotta know where you are going.
And you have to know who you are becoming.
**Like the philosopher Seneca said:
_“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind”**_
So know what you want.
And know where you are going.
If you don’t know these things you’ll get whatever life decides to serve you with - which will be nothing more than the scraps of what you could have had.
Why is that?
Well life will not give rewards to those who don’t deserve rewards.
It gives rewards to people who know what they want and people who do what must be done to get what they want.
“Well what about people who get lucky and win the lottery?”
Fuck those people.
Most of them will end up broke again because when you give poor people lots of money, they do what poor people do with money - they waste it on stupid shit and then they go back to doing nothing.
If you want to do nothing with your life, that’s perfectly fine.
Go play your video games, eat your Doritos and be a broke joke forever - you don’t need a mission because you’re a fucking loser and fucking losers don’t need missions because they’re fucking losers who are perfectly happy doing and being nothing.
But.
If you were born to do something and you actually want to accomplish something while you are alive - write it down, burn the vision into your mind and think about it all the goddamn time.
Do it right and you will have a potent source of fuel that you can use to claw your way out of whatever shit that you find yourself stuck inside.
Just like I did.
When you have defined your mission and developed a crystal clear vision of the life you want - it will create order in your mind and give you a DIRECTION to walk in.
Do you understand that?
Without a mission, I am a lost cause.
And with a mission, I am a focused, happy guy - that wakes up with a job to get done.
Without a mission, you will be a lost cause.
And with a mission, you will be a focused, happy guy - who wakes up with a job to get done.
Winners need a fucking mission and if they don’t have one: they will become a lost cause.
That’s just how it works.
So if you know what you want and you know where you’re going - you will not be a lost cause.
You will instead be running like a well oiled machine. Trucking along. And moving towards whatever vision it is that you have created in your mind.
In addition to that, stupid shit will no longer bother you because you will be focused on your vision and not on the stupid shit that used to bother you.
You will not play people’s games and you will not waste your time with people who play games because the only game that winners play is the game that they are the very best at - and that is their game.
I can always tell who is going somewhere and who is going nowhere.
The people going somewhere, simply look like they are going somewhere, and they are not bothered by the pathetic bullshit that people going nowhere, like to cause.
And why do they like to cause it?
A) They’re going nowhere.
B) They’re bored.
These fucking morons have nothing better to do so they create problems to entertain the small lump of dysfunctional grey matter inside their skull also known as their brain.
And if you do not have a mission, you will get sucked into their bullshit - then you will be going nowhere either.
This is the importance of having a mission.
It will become your light in the darkness.
It will bring order to the inherent chaos of life.
And it will you a damn purpose.
If you were not born to be loser and you were born to be a winner - you must have a mission or you will become depressed.
“But Maverick, how can I tell what I was born to be?”
That’s a stupid question because you already know what you were born to be and I can guarantee that it’s staring you in the face right now - just like it always has and always will.
But here is my answer:
If you’re fine doing nothing with your life and you can happily spend your days being a mindless zombie on the couch - you were born to become a resource for the winners.
If you’re not fine doing nothing with your life and you go insane without a goal to work towards - you were born to be a winner.
You will know which one you are.
And if you have found my work, that tells me which one you are.
”But, How Do I Find My Mission?”
Now that’s a good question.
Listen carefully:
Having a mission is one thing.
Having your mission, is another thing.
And one man’s mission is not another man’s mission.
Construction was never my mission.
I just picked it because it was better than scraping shit off bathroom floors.
Although I became really good at what I was doing - I always felt like something was missing, I never felt like I belonged and eventually it all came down on my head because I stopped caring about it.
Remember what Thor’s mum said in Avengers Endgame?
”Everybody fails at who they’re supposed to be. The real measure of a man is how well he does at being who he really is.”
~ Thor’s Mum ~
Listen closely because I want you to know something very important.
No matter how hard you try, you will never truly succeed in something you’re not mean’t to be doing.
You might get good enough to make a lot of money - but that is not real success.
And deep down, you will know it because you won’t feel right.
Real success is the discovery and completion of the right mission.
And the right mission is your destiny.
How do you find your destiny?
Well you just open your eyes and you be honest with yourself.
Nothing else is required.
It takes a lifetime for most people to do that though.
And by the time they finally do it - they are out of time.
Then, in their old age, they gasp for air beneath a mountain of regret and they say to themselves:
“I wish I had found the courage to do what I really wanted with my life.”
That’s the price you pay for living your life like a fucking pussy.
Do you want to pay that price?
I certainly don’t.
And I definitely won’t.
Until Next Time.
Filed under · Motivation
