LESSON 1: YOU MUST FIRST DECIDE TO BE HIGH CLASS

 

“The poor and the middle class work for money.

The rich have money work for them.”

-Rich Dad Poor Dad

I’m tired today, but I am determined. I am determined to create the life I have pictured in my head as “possible.” At the very same time I ask myself, “What is wrong with the life I already have? What is wrong with now?”

There are plenty of things wrong with NOW. My biggest problem is exhaustion. I don’t know how many more years I will have the physical capacity to do what I do for a living. I came home from work last night so tired that I wanted to cry. I would have cried, but I didn’t want to waste the energy.

It took me forty-five minutes to drive home. It was a forever journey by contemplation. I tried to decide if the pain I was in was worth it. I asked myself if I felt rewarded by accomplishment or defeated. I gave myself permission to experience both. My career is both immensely rewarding and defeating. Success takes a toll on my physical being. My body suffers because of it. Sometimes it leaves me in agony.

Survival of the fittest. I need to go to the gym or at least devote myself to a fitness routine that will allow me to condition my body for peak performance. If something happens to my body my life is toast. That truth is very real. My job is both physically and mentally challenging. I am sometimes on my feet without rest for ten hours or more. I am most often not remembering to drink water, or to eat. Everything during these hours is rapid fire stress and the stakes are forever. I need to remain mentally agile, while maintaining a core of physical strength and endurance.

 People hire me to document and record days of monumental importance, once in a lifetimes, and somewhere along the journey it become my responsibility to orchestrate. Orchestration is not documentation. I am never a bystander. I am the ultimate success of my product. I help ensure the best memories are captured and also the picture one has in one’s head. Life as art.

I make my living as an artist. If you have ever heard the term, “starving artist,” I would argue it as false. If you are talented and smart there should never be reason for starvation. Not all artists starve. Some are quite affluent. That is not to say I do not sometimes go hungry and without. I am not the smartest and I do not have the most talent and there for I do not make very much money…

STOP.

I did not mean that last sentence at all. I AM my most talented. I AM proven intelligence. I AM success repeated. I AM also sometimes failure by my own design.

The thing I have come to realize about my life and my future is that it is much like my career. I am never a bystander. I am the ultimate success of the product. It is completely up to me to set my own value.

DO I WANT TO BE CLASSIFIED AS POOR? DO I WANT TO BE IN THE MIDDLE? DO I WANT TO BE ELITE?

I’m thinking back to my childhood now; to the innocent truth of a child who still believes the things that grown-ups tell them. “Anything is possible child. If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Fair enough. I pick elite. I would like to be in that class. So what now? Do I get a golden ticket hidden in a chocolate bar? Will a legacy now be mine? Or…does that answer put me back in the middle? Would the majority choose ELITE if they knew it is possible? What will happen to “average” if everyone wins?

We won’t all win though. Some of us will settle for “good enough.” Some of us will stay with, “I did my best.” What is our best potential? Can you answer that for me because if I am to compare myself to the elite of all things I am mediocre and it seems quite concrete, “I do not need to be the best at everything. I will never master it all.”

I do need to be the best at everything I do though. I deserve that standard because it is the level I’ve set for myself. High class living is not reckless indulgence and spending. It is living by and expecting an exceptional standard, while insisting on quality. This is a right earned by reputation. If I can’t be the fastest runner on the planet, I will be MY fastest runner on the planet. If I can’t live in a mansion, I will make my home resemble one. If I have no home I will consider it freedom to go anywhere I want to create one. I want to live in the best neighborhood. Never mind that I was homeless before. I am worth it.

I do not want to be poor because it puts me in a position of need. I do not want to live life needing to take from others. I do not want to be in the middle because there are so many people there that I can’t see myself as noteworthy. I want to be one of the few who climb the mountain to its peak without dying on the way to the top. Even still, what if I die before I make it? At least I see myself making it. My class is set high because it allows an endless climb.