What it takes to be an inspiration.

     I've never really considered myself to be an inspiration. I'm pretty much an average guy. I have talents but don't really have a clue what to do with them. In many ways I'm a lost soul searching for meaning and purpose. Searching very hard.... I suppose I should start a few months back.... A few years actually.

      In high school I was the one who everyone thought would be famous some day. Everyone thought I would be on Broadway a year after high school... but it was not meant to be. There I was a year and a half after high school with nothing. I had a dead end job and no car... I didn't even have my drivers licence, I was very over weight and had no drive to get in shape. I was so very very lost. I was hurting and felt like I had lost all my spark, all my zest for life was gone. Slowly but steadily extinguished. Ripped away from me slowly by everyone and everything around me. I was besieged by people talking about "The real world" and "When you grow up things change" and I found myself starting to believe these voices. Believing them that the only way to live was to live like everyone said. To be a lowly servant. People would talk about great people as "The exception to the rule, not the rule" and I believed it... and I died. Not literally but figuratively. My love of life was slowly crushed under "The real world" and the people "Just being realistic" and my light was extinguished. I became what I swore I never would be... normal... basic... average.... I was destroyed.

     ...but things changed....

     I asked myself "What makes these great people the exception? Why can't I be the exception?" and I realized I can be... I realized that ANYONE can be.  What makes them the exception is that they are exceptional.  No one is born exceptional at anything... All the truly greats have to practice. 

     So there I was sitting there playing a computer game wasting away... rotting... my brain, my body and my spirit eroding and I asked my mom (who is the most beautiful of all people ever. I love her more than life itself) if I was wasting my life... and she dodged the question. I wasn't even the slightest bit upset with my mom, she was honest in her dodging of the question.  I didn't get depressed. I decided to change. To stop wasting my time. I closed my laptop and decided I would change... but I didn't know what to do. It was late at night I couldn't go practice driving or buy a car or get promoted at work... all I really had control over in that moment was my physical body. 

     I decided to lose weight. That night I spent over 5 hours on my exercise bike... which prior to that made a great clothes rack... but I put it to use with its actual purpose. A few days later I told my mom I was doing a "no carb diet" which was in reality a diet of  no breads, no pastas and pretty much no grains of any kind.  It was so hard. I wanted to give up but in the course of the following months I started to lose weight. I watched as I slowly but steadily dropped 45 pounds. 

     My confidence started to grow. I could feel the spark coming back. I looked in the mirror and was proud of what I saw. It felt so good and I decided my time had come... that I had spent too much time sulking and withering. It was time to grow.  With my confidence raised I took my drivers test for the 4th time and this time I passed!!!!! A few months later I bought a car in cash and that felt good too. I realized that in the course of less than a year I went from a failure to completing all of my life goals I had set. It felt good.

     I wasn't doing any of this for attention. I didn't want pats on the back and compliments... although I certainly won't refuse them ;) haha.... but people started to give them.  People would tell me about what kind of an inspiration I was. People told me how I motivated them, how I inspired them to better themselves and I was so confused.  As much as my self image had improved I still saw myself as flawed and broken.  The pieces had started to come together but were only tied together by a loose thread at best. I am so far from my goals but I'm still pushing myself and that's all that matters.

     I found myself pushing myself even harder.  Not to live for other people or impress them but to not let them down and the harder I tried the more people seemed to be inspired.  

     It then occurred to me. It occurred to me what it was that made people feel inspired. It occurred what it was that made the exceptional people the exception to the rule. It wasn't talent or fame or money (although between us those things do help... I'm just saying) but it was the work.  The hard work day in and day out. I realized that at the core of every person telling me that I inspired them was that they were impressed by my hard work and wished they could do it.... but they can.  I realized that everyone has the power to be exceptional. I am nothing special. I am no great man. I'm just a man who decided to work for something.  I was lost and broken.... so very very broken but I decided to fix myself and I worked for it.

     Anyone can do it! You can do it! I believe in you 100% You are much stronger than you give yourself credit for.  Trust me when I say I am one of the laziest people you ever met but I found the desire, the ambition for greatness. That ambition is in you still. Maybe you have been told for years that you can't, that you are nothing special and you are just the average person, you aren't the exception to the rule... you are the rule.... BUT YOU AREN'T!!! You might be now but you can change that in an instant. In an instant you can close your lap top and get exercising like I did, or you can practice a talent you always wanted to master or you can finish reading that book, or heal a broken relationship. Trust me when I say what you can accomplish is endless, it has no boundaries! You are strong and beautiful and amazing and I know that you can be great in every way. 

     So what does it take to inspire? To decide to change, to work hard at it, and to not give up! Even the smallest step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction.  There is no such thing as a small accomplishment if it is big to you! Baby steps if you have to... just keep stepping... keep walking and I'll see you on the path to greatness! I'll be expecting you!


You can follow my own personal journey here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Zorkocy/211055175491?ref=hl