All too often, I hear someone say, I could never run a company like Facebook, or I could never be as good as LeBron James, or sing as well as Bon Jovi. Well I'm here to tell you that greatness lives inside of all of us. Will Smith said it best, "Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive thing that only the special among us will ever taste. It is something that truly exists in all of us." If it's okay, I'll share with you my story.
Freshmen Year of High School
First year in high school in a new school district and I tried out for the high-school basketball team. I thought I had a pretty good shot at making the team. I had been going to every practice, mandatory and non mandatory, the coaches knew who I was and everything seemed to be going well. I didn't make the team.
I actually cried and skipped the rest of school that day. I had two choices to make at that moment in life, I could either continue crying and say how unfair the world is or I could work even harder to come back next year. Alongside of my dad, I asked the 9th grade coach if I could at least workout with the team during the season to stay in shape and get better, surprisingly he said yes. That winter I worked on my game at practice and after practice. I already knew what I was good at now I had to work on everything I wasn't good at.
Sophomore Year of High School
10th grade year comes around and again I try out for the team and once again I didn't make it. I was devastated but this time I shed no tears, I knew what I had to do. I joined the track team, specifically the long distance team. I said to myself I won't be the best guy on the court, I won't be the strongest guy on the court, but I will be able to outwork everyone on the court because I will have the endurance to do so. My friends looked at me like I was crazy, calling me stupid for joining the long distance team because we were running 5-7 miles a day at practice.
Initially I was no good at it, I wasn't the slowest but I certainly wasn't the fastest. I didn't see much progress at first but by my third meet of the season, I ran a 5:05 mile. Turns out that was the fastest mile for any 10th grader in our school including the distance runners on the team. I begin to gain confidence and by the end of the season I was running under 5 min miles regularly. My efforts rolled into the summer going into my 11th grade year. I was up everyday at 8am running 5-6 miles a day then heading to the court to do dribbling and shooting drills, then shower and head to work. This continued throughout the summer and I slowly begin to notice I was becoming faster and stronger.
Junior Year of High School
11th grade year came and I knew this was my year to make the basketball team! I led every sprint, every running test, I became known for my tenacious defense due to my high level of stamina and agility. I went from practicing with the players who were most likely not going to make the team, to practicing with the actually players on the team! This was my year right? Wrong! Once again I was cut! I was crushed but threw myself into working on making myself better. I joined multiple basketball leagues and continued running track as well.
Toward the end of my junior year I said to myself, I'm actually not to bad at track why not focus on where my skills are. I didn't have innate talent for running, but I was determined to outwork everyone. Going into my senior year, I wanted to challenge myself, so I decided to run cross country. In high school cross country races are 3.1 miles in college they are 5 mile races.
Senior Year of High School
I had never run this kind of distance races before and once again everyone said, "Chris you can't run against those guys, they'll destroy you. Your not fast enough, your not skinny enough." Even some members of the cross country team did not think I would be good at cross country. I took all the negativity and used it as fuel to push myself along. Once again, I'm not the most talented runner, but I made sure to work my tail off to make up for that talent gap. I ended up being the fourth best runner on the team that year and made All League with only one year of running cross country under my belt.
I ran so well that colleges begin to offer me track scholarships and now the high school basketball coaches were asking me to come and play for the team; they needed a player with my skills, how ironic huh. Amazing how the universe works.
College Years
I took an offer to run in Denver, Co getting the chance to run against some of the best runners in the world, including future Olympic runners. Once again people doubted me, "You can't compete against those runners, your training program is too hard," I heard it all. Not only was I the best runner on my team, I was now able to run a 4:30 mile.
But my journey was far from over. How many of you have dreams of being something when you grow up? I surely had dreams, big dreams!
My goal going to college was to learn a skill that I could use to one day work for myself. I started off as a marketing major and after four college transfers I ended up changing my major to journalism and transferred to Howard University. By this time, I was slowly realizing school was not teaching me what I wanted to learn. I had tons of awesome ideas in my head that I wanted to start but I didn't know where to start or how to start them. So I began to research how to start a company, how to build ideas, how to recruit a team. I begin to read books on how to interact with business minded people, people of other races, people of other cultures. I read books that worked on changing my mindset and watched videos of some of the best entrepreneurs, actors, musicians from around the world talk about what it took to be successful.
Taking A Year Off
The summer of my senior year of college, I took on the task of teaching myself to code in order to actually put one of my ideas into action. I spent 12-14 hours a day practicing coding, sending emails to entrepreneurs, advisors, Venture Capitalists, you name it! I experienced moments of frustration and joy but before long I had actually gathered enough knowledge to build my first website for a local business. Around June I sat my parents down and said, mom and dad, I am dropping out of school, moving to California and starting my own company.
They were not happy with it, but I had put so much time and effort into this for the past few months that I had everything laid out and had already started making connections. Guys and girls if you believe in yourself and your dreams the universe will bend to your will.
California-Back To Philly
Not only did I move to California, I started my business, found a co-founder, had a graphic designer join the team and connected with people I would never ever have the chance to meet if I didn't make a decision to take a risk. This all happened before I turned 21.
I have since then moved back to Philly and have been using the skills, lessons and knowledge I have acquired since the beginning of my journey.
7 Principles I Live My Life By
So I will leave you with this, 7 principles I live my life by:
1. In the game of basketball, I have mastered the skill of relentless defense causing my opponent to take himself out the game. The same goes with the game of life, never ever let anyone destroy your dream. Look at all of the obstacles in your life that you previously could not get pass. Relentlessly attack them, coming back for more and more and more. If you believe in your heart and mind that you can make it a reality then it will happen.
2. Do not fear rejection. I've been rejected so many times, told I'm weird, the list goes on. Guess what, I'd rather stand out and fail then sit back and blend in (being beige) for the rest of my life. People recognize hard work and dedication. The moment I stopped fearing rejection is the moment I gained the confidence to achieve anything that I put my mind to. Be confident in yourself, your idea and don't be afraid to be different because those are the ones who make a difference in the world.
3. Always aim for the unrealistic goals because doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic. What do I mean by that? 99% of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for being mediocre/"the realistic goals". The level of competition is therefore fiercest for the "realistic" goals.
4. In order to be successful at anything you must have the right attitude, mindset and VISION. If you want to achieve any goal or vision that you have set out for youself you have to be fully committed. You will run into obstacles, you will lose friends, run into haters and doubters. We all will experience problems, but thats what makes life what it is. In return, these problems build up our belief in our idea and strengthens both your attitude and mindset.
5. There's no shortcut to success. We believe that because we aren't the most talented we can't do this or we can't do that. Listen, talent you have naturally, but skill is only developed from hours upon hours from working on your craft. No matter how talented you are, eventually your talent will fail you if your not skilled. You have to be willing to dedicate yourself to being better everyday and develop the work ethic to surpass those with talent. Lay one brick at a time and soon you've built a wall from hard work. When I'm out there running and I don't think I can go any further I always remember, every step I take is one step closer to home. This goes hand in hand with you chasing your dreams, when people put you down or you've experienced rejection, remember, this is one step closer to the finish line.
6. Don't measure your success against anyone else. By societies standards am I great? No. In my mind am I great? Absolutely. Greatness and success is not something that is only limited to those who are super talented. It lives inside of all of us. As long as you remember who you are and what you believe; all that is left is to do what you need to do to get where you want to go.
7. And last but not least, prepare, prepare, prepare. If you do not prepare for things that will happen in your life you will go through every single day the same way. You will not grow or change. I cannot stress this to you enough, the time you spend watching videos on Worldstarhiphop or watching Teen Moms, you could be using to read a book, working on a project or expanding your mind. The most successful people in the world read at least 1 book a month, and I'm not talking about 50 Shades of Grey. I typically read 6-8 books a month but I enjoy reading. Look at it like this if you take 20 mins a day to learn and improve yourself, you will be in the upper 5%, that puts you in company with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Michael Jordan. You will be doing more preparation than 95% of the people in the world, so when an opportunity comes you are ready for it. Those who are successful prepare for life, the rest of us react to what life brings us.
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