Nothing Worth Doing Is Easy

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Go ahead, beat your head against the desk. I’m wrong, right? I have to be wrong. There are a lot of things that are worth doing that are easy. Okay. Sure. Maybe so, but were they easy to start with?

Riding a bike. Was it easy the first time you hopped up on that two-wheeler and began to peddle? For most of us that answer is no.

How about the first time you drove a car? Was that easy? Maybe for a couple of folks, but for most, probably not. It takes time to learn all the nuances to driving, including always paying attention to your surroundings and the other drivers around you.

Did you ever play sports? Was it easy while you were learning how? Probably not.

Some people are gifted. They don’t have to put forth much effort to accomplish something. But those people are few and far between. Most of us have to work at things to become better, to succeed.

I go back to my opening sentence: Nothing worth doing is easy.

How about I change that a little?

Nothing worth being successful at is easy.

Oh my. I just stirred the hornet’s nest, didn’t I?

To be successful at something, you have to work at it. It’s not going to be easy. Things don’t come naturally for all of us. Most of us have to think things out, come up with a plan and then execute that plan in hopes that things will turn out the way we, well, planned. Often things don’t pan out. That’s life.

The late Jack Curran was known to say, “The road to success is always under construction.”

Curran was a very successful high school basketball and baseball coach for Archbishop Molloy. He coached at AM for 55 years and he knew a little bit about success. He knew that in order to be successful, you had to constantly work at it. Just because you succeed once doesn’t mean you will do so again. Curran knew that as well.

There is another thing that goes with that road to success: starting. You can never be successful if you don’t actually try. You have to start something in order to find out if you can do it. Do you want to be a musician? You have to try an instrument before you can be one. Then you have to find the instrument that fits you. You can’t do that if you don’t first try. Of course, if you don’t try, you can’t fathom success.

Do you want to be an athlete? You have to try a sport to see if you want to pursue it, if it is right for you. If you don’t try, you can’t succeed.

Do you want to own your own business? Yeah, that’s right. You can’t do so unless you look into it and then attempt to do it.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to see my work get published. For a long while I didn’t pursue that dream of being a writer. I was nervous. What if no one liked my work? What if it doesn’t sell? What if someone blasted my work? It was daunting, to say the least.

Then when I discovered I might be able to do this after all, I learned it’s a lot of work. It’s not easy. But you know what? By having to work hard at this, when one of my stories gets picked up or someone reviews one of my collections and likes it, it’s that much more rewarding for me for having put in the effort to pursue something I wanted to do.

Let me encourage you–all of you–to chase what dreams you have. Big or small doesn’t matter. If you want to be successful at something, you have to first try it and then pursue it and then keep working at it. Nothing worth doing is easy. Nothing worth being successful at is easy. And, as Jack Curran would say, the road to success is always under construction.

So get to work, get to paving that road.

Until we meet again, my friends…