My friend, Chris, wrote this article and it was really inspiring, so I thought I'd share with everybody else.

Life is short.

Some people die at birth. Some people live forever.

I know a man, a person close to me. Here is a man who was born into a good family, a very wealthy family. Growing up he had everything taken care of. His college was paid for, as well as advanced schooling to obtain a very well respected position. Here he is, approaching 40 years old, and the proud owner of 2 condos in beautiful downtown Chicago. He is dead.

Faith is what turns an ordinary thought into a rich, vibrant reality.

This is not meant to bash this man. In fact, if anything, he is the normal one, I am the outcast. I am the one with the faith. I am the one that has aspirations. I do not know a human being who has studied/bought more self-help products than the one I currently am talking about. I rarely see this man, but every time I come in contact with him things are still the same.

He gets drunk 4x a week, and has been doing so for nearly 20 years. He studies self help 20+ hours a week, but never puts anything into action. He is afraid. He lives in fear, in fear of himself. He will live in a state of "what if" for the remainder of his life, because he is too scared to leave his cushy lifestyle to take a chance. Once again, there is nothing wrong with this, if anything it makes you very normal.

What you are looking for you will not find on this board. You'll only find it within yourself. Everything in life comes down to flipping a switch. The more answers you look for the further from your goal you will stray. It will only keep you from further facing your fear.

Most men go through life dead. They never strive for anything. They never see a wall and run straight through it. They spend years trying to find a way around it, and they give up when the easiest way is facing that fear and going right through it.

Life is not that hard. We just make it hard, because it's a lot easier to accept failure when your ego is not involved. I've lived in my car, had no money, no anything. It still was not that hard. Now that I've made something out of myself I can easily realize that. When you look for tactics and ways to get around something, it is not your fault when you fail. When you look your fear in the eye and go right at it, it is you any only you. And when that becomes your reality you will become the man you are to become. All of our goals and aspirations funnel into becoming that man we dream of becoming.

When you flip that switch you will never ask for advice again. You will become the smartest man you know, the man who takes action, and you will reap the rewards.

Very few men ever encounter this. But the ones that do, you never forget. They live forever. They never die.

-enoch