A little struggle and difficult is not always bad. We can actually flip around negative circumstances and frustrations and use them to our advantage if we are willing to overcome challenges other are not.
In this video, I talk about why you might want to consider heading to higher ground or to go through the difficult terrain so that you can differentiate yourself from the pack.
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Full transcript below
John: Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com and I’ve got something I’m really excited to talk about today because this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s something that I’ve been applying a lot in my life and I didn’t even realize it and it really helped me to achieve a lot of successes in different areas where I might not have been able to be as successful. But I was thinking about it when I was running this last week or a couple of weeks ago and it finally clicked in my mind and I finally realized what that thing was. Actually, reading a book helped me to realize this but I’ll tell you what that is coming up next.
So the thing that I discovered that I was doing that I think is really important is heading to higher ground. Let me explain what I mean by heading to higher ground is. When we’re trying to accomplish something, when we’re trying to compete in some area, what tends to happen is we tend to get discouraged because things get hard. When the road gets hard a lot of us drop off and we get discouraged and we see that as a bad thing. If I’m running a race or something and I’m getting tired and I start to feel like I don’t want to run anymore and I give up, I see that as a bad thing that it got hard so I gave up.
It happens in your career. It happens in just about anything you would pursue. If you want to be a good musician you’re going to practice a lot. You’re going to play a lot and you’re going to reach some level where most people drop off and then you’re going to have to make a choice there and that seems like something that’s negative.
If you want to be an athlete this same things happens. If you want to be a good software developer the same thing happens, the road gets hard. But we can flip this around. Instead of making this be a bad thing, we can make it a good thing because what we can do is we can think about heading to higher ground.
Let me paint a little bit of a different picture here. Imagine that instead of thinking about being discouraged because the road is getting hard you think about that you’re going somewhere where other people aren’t going to be able to follow you. You’re heading towards higher ground. You think of it as your being chased that you’re going up a mountain and there are people chasing you. Well, the higher you get up the mountain the harder the terrain gets the less that you’re going to be chased, the less your competition is going to be able to chase you, the less people are going to make it there with you.
When you want to differentiate yourself, when you want to achieve success you flip it around and you think about heading for higher ground. You think about going for the rough terrain. Go the place where other people aren’t going to go. I’ll give you a good example here.
Take these YouTube videos, right? There are a lot of people doing YouTube videos out there, a lot of people. When I started out, I did YouTube videos from my webcam like most people, probably 80% of YouTube videos that they do out there. They were okay, but they weren’t great quality or anything. But I said, “How can I take this to higher ground? How can I make it so less people can follow me?”
So I raised the bar higher. I got a better camera and I figured out how to set my lighting and how to set up a real kind of recording studio. When I did that I kind of raised the bar. I went to higher ground. There’s less competition, less people to follow me. I have a more quality type of product here and it’s going to benefit me more.
The same thing even with doing a video. There’re a lot of software developers that have blogs. There are a lot of software developers that do tutorials and videos, but there’s not a lot of software developers that will get on camera, look like an idiot for 5 minutes or so and record a YouTube video and post it every single week. I figured, “If I do this, I’m going to be heading towards higher ground.”
What are the areas in your life where you can head towards higher ground? How can you differentiate yourself? How can you go a path that’s hard for people to follow you? If you can figure that out and you can pursue that you’re going to have huge success because you’re going to be way up there where no one else is going to be able to reach you so you’re going to really set yourself ahead of the pack, away from the pack and put yourself in a position to achieve more success than you would if you just stayed with the pack, if you just did what everyone else was doing and never raise the difficulty level.
So next time you think that something is too hard, don’t think of it as something bad. Think of it as an opportunity because if you can overcome it, if you can head towards the higher ground then you’re going to go places where other people won’t dare to go because they’re going to give up along the way.
If you liked this video and I hope you did, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. Thanks for all the support again with these videos. It’s fun, something I enjoy doing and I’m glad there’re people out there that are benefiting from it as well. If you have ideas, let me know. I’ve got to plan out this whole year so I’ve got a lot of videos to make this year. Just let me know what kind of vides you’d like to see, what kind of topics that you’d like me to talk about.
Don’t forget to check out my blog at simpleprogrammer.com. I also have a podcast out there about fitness called Get Up and Code. If you want some challenges on fitness, want to get in shape go check that out as well and I’ll see you next week, take care.