A friend had posted this video on his FB:

Darren Hardy – Build a Live (Ashton Kutcher)

Granted, while it was a Teen Awards ceremony, there were some words of wisdom coming from Ashton Kutcher to this young crowd. One of the 3 points he made stuck out to me, which was the first one about opportunity.

He says that people make their own opportunity through hard work. He mentions sweeping floors, washing dishes, shingling roofs, and so forth. It was odd for me to remember a different take on this mentality. I completely agree, opportunity is what one forges through their own effort, blood, sweat, tears, and struggles. There is another mentality that conflicts with this one – one that unfortunately a few people I know adapt in their own lives, and it’s one that I absolutely abhor.

It’s the perspective that people are given their skills, talents, luck, money, situations, opportunities, and chances at building their life.

Sure, no one is dealt the same hand of cards in life at the start, but if there can be people who come from poverty, disability, and the bottom of social strata to great success through the efforts of their own hands (and there are plenty of them), NO ONE has an excuse. NO ONE has an excuse to complain about their station in life. It’s very American (in the lazy sense), very millennial (in the spoiled sense), and simply a cop out for people who are simply not motivated to put the sweat in but yearn for all the fruits of doing so.

So when I hear snarky quips on the lines of “oh, she must have gotten a lot of help from her parents,” or “he got lucky because his family is already from lots of money,” or “someone must have helped him out because there’s no way he could have done that by himself,” I hear the tone of the quips, the tone of where it comes from, and the natural inclination for people to talk smack. I hear the reflection and projection of their own failures, their laziness, and static thinking that we are all bound to the limits of the cards we are dealt in life. They can have that thinking – not for me, thanks.

I absolutely hate with a passion this kind of defeatist, entitled, and life-limiting talk. The attitude that one has to live within the confines of what they’ve been given, well, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Ashton says in his video in a tribute to Steve Jobs, one has the power to build their life – not just participate in the constructions of other lives around them.

If one doesn’t believe that building a life is truly possible, then they truly do not understand the consequence of living within the confines of other people’s thinking. That’s actually how most people think, so I have to be gentle around this topic.

But this is my blog, so I’m going to say it how it is (besides who reads my junk anyway?! lol).

You build your own life, or someone will simply build it for you. And don’t complain if you find yourself decades from now wondering what could have been. It’s what you signed up for so be content.

Not content? Then make some big thangs happen. Ain’t no one gonna give it to you.