Why Not You?

The line that encourages me to pursue "the impossible"

It was 11 a.m.
It was seventy degrees and the sun was out.
I was three feet deep in a hole in the middle of someone’s front yard.

I was alone—and had been digging for a couple of hours now.

I was an irrigation technician. The work was tough, but it was satisfying. It paid the bills, so I did what I needed to do.

During those hours of putting the shovel to the dirt, I had earbuds in.

I was listening to audiobooks, YouTube videos, anything I possibly could to keep myself going, keep myself encouraged, and keep myself motivated.

I found myself listening to a lot of Jim Rohn speeches.

And there was one line he said that never left my mind:

He said that he had a mentor who challenged him to set a goal:

Make a million dollars.

It wasn’t about the money, he said. It was about who he would have to become to make that million dollars.

At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant. I was working what was essentially a minimum-wage job. Making a million dollars felt about as realistic as living on Mars.

But over the years, I’ve come to understand exactly what he meant.

I've had the chance to talk to CEOs, business owners, and people making hundreds of thousands of dollars. And what I came to realize with all of them was this:

They were just like me.

Most of them started out with nothing. They built everything they had from the ground up.

"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin." — Zechariah 4:10

You see, that line Jim Rohn said— "Why not you?" —that’s the mindset you need to have if you want to aspire to anything bigger than just yourself.

The people you look up to, the businesses you admire, the works of art you stand in awe of— we put the people behind those things on pedestals. But in reality, they’re not very different from us.

They had the same struggles. They faced the same doubts. They battled the same challenges.

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." — Winston Churchill

The only difference? They didn’t let those challenges stop them. They kept asking the question: Why not me?

So if you’re in a place right now where you feel like you have nothing to offer, or no chance of reaching the level of the people you admire—let this line live in your mind:

Why not you?

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." — Philippians 4:13