Hello Misfit Nation! Welcome to another edition of "Lessons for Hannah!" In November of 2016, we introduced a new format that we are putting alongside our regular episodes called “Lessons for Hannah.” Hannah is my daughter and one of the main inspirations for the Misfit Entrepreneur. I wanted to have a place where she could go and learn from her daddy and his Misfit friends throughout her life….even after I am gone. If you haven’t listened to the first episode of "Lessons for Hannah," I urge you to as it gives some more background and tells the amazing story of how Hannah came to be in our lives.
"Lessons for Hannah" are short, very useful, and sometimes comical lessons, that I have learned which I want to share with you and give to Hannah to help in your lives. Because I want Hannah to have these for her life, I’m going to speak as though I am talking directly to her. These episodes are a lot of fun and if you think there is a lesson that we should include in these episodes, please don’t hesitate to send it over to us at support@misfitentrepreneur.com. We’d love to share it.
This week’s Lesson for Hannah
I want to talk to you about faith. Faith in god, faith in yourself, and faith in the goodness of others. If you look up faith in the dictionary, you get several different definitions, but the overarching meaning is to believe in something or have confidence in something without necessarily having the proof that it is yet true.
Faith is essential to success in life. Many times, the things we manifest in our minds or the dreams we have are not yet true. We can see them in our imagination so vividly, but yet, they do not exist. It is faith that keeps up going to make them a reality. Now, there are different kinds of faith as I mentioned at the beginning of this message. The first, and I believe most important one, is faith in god. You’ve heard me talk before about the miracle that any of us are even alive. In fact, the chances are 10 to the 2.5 millionth power or about as close to impossible as you can get. Taking that a step further than even the chances of you being alive is the even smaller chance that you were meant to be with your mother and I. When I think about this and think about all the amazing things we get to experience in our lives and the divine works that go into it, it is easy for me to have faith in God.
I know deep within in my soul that there is a creator and that I am blessed by them beyond belief – not because of the accomplishments we’ve had in life and the things we are able to afford and do (although those are incredible blessings too), but because I have you, your mother, our family, and our friends. God has given us a great book of life to live and equipped us with the abilities to write it. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that because of my faith in God things will turn out in the best way they are supposed to, in good times and in bad.
Aside from creating your own faith in God, you must have faith in yourself. You are more capable than you will ever know. I feel one of the most tragic traits of human beings is the incredible ability for many of us NOT to live up to our true potential. We make excuses for it or let things get in the way of our dreams, but the truth is many of us don’t have the faith in ourselves to truly go after what we know we are capable of. It goes beyond fear of failure to more of a fear of what happens if we succeed? Because we know, if we succeed, that we will need and want to continue to operate at those levels and beyond. We know that it would mean holding ourselves to a much higher standard. And it also means that people will judge us more based on actions and/or inaction and this can paralyze people and hold them back from achieving greatness. This is why you must develop faith in yourself to go beyond these things. An undeniable faith in the ability to reach your potential, dreams, goals, and aspirations is what has propelled us throughout time.
Along the way, there are some that just do not back down. Their faith in themselves creates the burning desire, an un-extinguishable flame to achieve greatness. History is riddled with examples of this for us, from Jesus Christ to the founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence and then mustered their faith to fight until they made the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident” ring throughout the world, to the soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy and defeated the most evil empire ever in the Nazi regime, to completing the “impossible task” of landing a man on the moon. Behind it all was faith. You too are capable of greatness when you have faith in God combined with an undeniable faith in yourself.
Lastly, have faith in the goodness of others. In the world we live in with media all around us coming from all directions this Is hard. It’s hard mainly because the majority of things reported or shared on a large scale are negative or divisive. I’m here to tell you that that is not reality. The reality is every day, almost 8 billion people, get up and are looking to better their lives with their families. The overwhelming majority of people are good and know right from wrong. And every day, there are far more acts of goodness and greatness than there are of negativity or wrongdoing. Those things just don’t grab attention as much as the shock of something terrible. Let me give you an example to put this in perspective. Every day, there are well over 100,000 plane flights taking place all over the world. Pilots encounter all sorts of things when they fly, many of which the passengers never even know. In fact, every day pilots all over the world, make decisions that save their passengers lives and prevent a disaster – but you never hear about that. You hear about maybe one flight per year or every other year that was a tragedy and it is plastered all over the news for days. Think about that – one flight out of millions upon millions – when all the while heroes are saving others.
It is the same with people. Heroes are all around us. We are heroes in some way, if not every day, probably every week. Have faith in people. Have faith in the goodness of the human spirit and understand that while there will be failings of it and bad things will happen – there is a lot more good in this world than there is bad.
Hannah, I could go on this topic for hours and hopefully, if you mother and I have done our job somewhat well, you already have these faiths instilled in you. Embrace them, make them yours and use them to help you in reaching your full potential in your spiritual life, your contribution to the world, and with your fellow man. Remember, faith backed by committed action can achieve great things.
I love you,
Daddy
Best Quote: “Faith is essential to success in life. Many times, the things we manifest in our minds or the dreams we have are not yet true. We can see them in our imagination so vividly, but yet, they do not exist. It is faith that keeps up going to make them a reality."
Misfit 3: