Why everyone has the little awesome inside

Life is a big pile of circumstance. I was born to a family with zero money. We lived on a huge council estate and I spent most of my youth in second generation hand-me-downs. The people I met, and befriended were of the same ilk. My entire family were cut from the same cloth as every other family on the estate that we lived on.

There was a fire inside my belly from a young age, one that always wanted to do better for himself, would always see the poverty and depression and destitution around him and would want to run, to make it to the big city, to do something with himself. To do something with my life.

But that never happened.

I moved, yes.

But I moved to another area which was exactly the same as the one I was in before. I moved to escape the troubles and strife of the place I was in before. But I didn't have the education nor the money to truly take me out and I didn't have the understanding of how to really take myself out.

It came though, eventually, and as I have written about here:

My point of change

Reflections on my parenting style

Some lessons I've learned along the way

And it took someone awesome to guide me out of the hole I was in. It's sad because poverty perpetuates poverty but that's the way it is unfortunately.

I could not just take myself out of a situation when I had no knowledge how to do so. I had lived that way, and been taught that way all my life. How am I expected to know anything different?

Luckily they could see the fire burning angrily in my eyes. The raw and untapped enthusiasm to do something better.

I wanted to do more

to be more

I wanted to grab the world by the fucking balls and own that shit. I didn't want to repeat several generations of mistakes that my family had. I didn't want to come home drunk after a heavy night on the ale and beat up my kids and I certainly didn't want to teach them a lifetime of my mistakes.

And luckily I found my way out. I got help. And I took it. I owned it!

Someone saw the awesome in me and ripped it out of me for the world to see. In fact, awesomeness has been ripped out of me several times - I keep meeting these people.

But lets stop for a second and not just concentrate on me.

I think everyone has the awesome inside. Everyone. I just met the right people. And I landed on a shitload of good circumstances later in life.

Some people don't know the right people and have friends that use them, and are abused and a ton of other really negative things. Some people don't have the good circumstances that I fell upon.

But that doesn't mean to say they don't have it. Oh no. There's awesome in everyone. Absolutely everyone.

Turns out that the girl that was shouted at constantly by her abusive boyfriend of two years is now a really good diplomat and has a really high threshold for shouty people. She's now top dog in customer relations.

Or the boy that spent all his youth studying for that top place in University, getting A's in everything only to find out that he was turned down by a matter of geographical bias. He now teaches kids to enjoy life and focus on what matters and loves himself for doing it.

I swear. There is awesome in everyone. Absolutely everyone.

If there's two things I consider is an absolute must in life it's these.

Fail at least once in everything you attempt

Learn to meet the right people - and by the 'right' people. Those that help and inspire.

And then, my friend, life will be the best. I hope!