Sometimes, you have to say no.
You HAVE to say no.
I’m known around the world for my unshakeable determination to say “YES!” and figure out how. There’ve been countless times in my life where I said yes to the situation, took on the challenge and came out 100 times better for it.
There is no situation where I don’t see a way to say yes, and then get crazy resourceful enough to make it happen.
But trust me when I say that perhaps the most important moment of my life was when I said “No.”
I HAD to say no.
…
Leaving my W-2 job in my mid-20’s was scary.
Seriously – leaving Chevron to start something of my own was unbelievably frightening.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you know the feeling. Your family, your friends, your loved ones – everyone’s trying to persuade you to not do it. Everyone is trying to justify why you’re crazy, why you’ll never make it, and why you’re out of your league.
You have a lot more enemies than friends when you’re on the cusp of becoming a full-fledged entrepreneur.
Pair this with the fact that leaving a consistent paycheck and the comfortability of working for someone else is just about the scariest thing you can do in your professional career, and I felt defeated even before I had started.
Everyone in my world was telling me to get a clue and go back to my “safe” job.
It became so much harder to ignore these doubters when times got tough and I questioned whether this was the right move for me.
I was lost.
Everyone who meant something to me was telling me to give it up and go back to my job.
…
But I said “no.”
I HAD to say no.
I said no to going back to my comfort zone.
I said no to familiarity.
I said no to mediocrity.
I said no to living my life for someone else.
I said no to being less than I was destined to me.
Only when I said no was I truly able to say yes to the life of opportunities, abundance and prosperity that was destined for me.
The wealth, the fame, the celebrity, the experiences, the joy – all of that only came after I said no to leading a life that I knew was not meant for me.
So…don’t settle. Say no to being less than who you truly are.
– LL
