I have quite high expectations of my life and I work daily towards reaching and maintain those standards but sometimes, my thoughts trail off into the gutter.

What do I mean? When things get tricky, the first thing you want to do is to resort back to familiar behaviours. Its what you know and what you believe to have worked and that’s fine…except excellence and greatness, cannot come from sameness or being comfortable. You must push against the urge to settle for less or what you are used to.

Whatever you used to get ‘there’ has served its purpose and cannot be recycled to advance you to the next place; you must evolve or otherwise forever be stuck.

By way of our upbringing, surroundings, associations and interactions we are nurtured to think and behave in specific terms. It stays that way until one day, we are introduced to something different, possibility.

For example, you want to buy a home, however, once upon a time owning property wasn’t even a figment of your imagination, never mind it being an actual reality. Your parents weren’t homeowners and neither were your grandparents. You lived in an area where the residents predominantly lived on welfare. You attended school with most of the kids who lived in your area BUT one day, there was an opportunity to join an after school club which you took. The club was girls scout. There you met with girls of different ages and backgrounds. You befriended a girl who was from a middle class family. You went to her house, met her family, had sleepovers, and here, you were introduced to a different way of living. You have now been exposed to the possibility of something different.

A gutter usually contains waste, and is full of things that are no longer beneficial to and for you, in this case it would be old habits and thinking practices. I cant lie and say its easy to do, after all you are literally trying to rid yourself of something that has been a part of you for a very long time, so what do you do? Take the blue pill (old ways) which you have consistently taken for years or try the red one(new ways)where the possibilities are endless? It is always your choice.

Three things you need to know:

• It wont be easy but it’ll be worth it
• When it gets challenging, you WILL want to resort back to what is familiar because lets face it, it’s the safest option, BUT you may never have what it is that you have always desired.
• The time is always now! Take it from me, its very easy to use the excuse of life has gotten in the way but with or without you, life will carry on. Its imperative to hold on and focus on the positive changes that you wish to effect into your life and the life of others.

I remember the year I graduated from University like it was yesterday, that was 7 years ago! And when I observe the things I wished to accomplish, I find that a lot has not yet been achieved, why? Well, life of course.

But how long will ‘life’ continue to be a crutch for the lack thereof? Again, the decision is made by you in what you opt to do on an everyday basis, take the blue pill, get the same results, take the red one and who knows? What do you have to lose?

Forward ever, backwards never.