People think it’s easy. That they can replicate one single thing I do, and get the same results that took me years to achieve.

Fools.

You cannot have some things without giving up others. You cannot keep yourself the same and still be someone new. You need to let go if you want to achieve something different.

It’s not the one thing I did, which people use solely to explain my success, that will make it replicable. It’s the combination of all the small, different things nobody bothers to acknowledge that count. The day-in, day-out commitment, the fine-tuning of habits, the entire picture of who I am now versus who I was five years ago. It’s an inexplicable interconnection of body and soul with neither beginning nor end, not an action list.

The me from five years ago could never be where I am now. The path is mine and mine alone, and it took a lot to get here.

But nobody asked my opinion, and therefore I did not give it. I smiled and nodded and pretended I did not see it for what it was. The continued attempt to put me in my place, dismissing my achievements as common or ordinary.

There’s nothing ordinary about me. There wasn’t when I was five years old and there definitely isn’t now.