Mission Over Self

If you want to accomplish anything, you must value the mission at hand more than your own self.

The self has needs; they tend to fluctuate based on your situation as well. With the self, you see needs for comfort, emotion, gratification, community, and all other things that go along with being human. It’s simply biology that our self needs are ingrained in us as an ancient survival technique which would benefit us in the wild: as an individual, that is. While these things are objectively human, in reality they have much potential to be major anti catalysts towards our biggest missions in life. Because they can oftentimes be satisfied temporarily, it can serve as a major distraction to make sure the self is cared for and comfortable in pursuit of winning the mission. In reality, this is not practical.

The mission is rigid. It is set in stone. The mission does not have “needs” or wants,” the mission has standards. In order to accomplish what you want to accomplish, you must exceed the standards set for the mission. The rate at which you accomplish the mission is seemingly irrelevant; your grace and skill towards your task ultimately does not matter in the grand scheme of things. For the mission, the only thing that can satisfy it is to overcome it. There’s no halfway winning, and there’s no half-effort reward.

The process of chasing achievement can be thought of as choosing to pursue the standards of the mission over the needs of the self time and time again, until the goal is accomplished. Most people cannot picture it like this, and more won’t realize its difficulty until they are pursuing a truly heart-testing task in their life. Choosing the mission over self is not easy, but it’s the only way through. What you need to know is that your constantly changing emotions and feelings towards the task and it’s difficulty will never change your innate human desire to conquer the task itself, however, on the other side of the coin, the only way human desire can be satisfied is by meaning through the accomplishment of the challenges of the world. To put it short, your needs don’t satisfy the standards of the mission, but beating the mission satisfies all your needs. Emotional needs are set in place to operate as a tool, not a prohibitor of your goals; too many people don’t have the ability to use them as such. Discomfort, unease, fear, and whatever else can do one of two things: freeze you in fear of what may happen as the result of failure or the uncharted area of maximum effort towards your goal, or it can drive you to limits of hard work beyond your comfort in order to rid it from your life via completing the task at hand. When this quarrel proposes itself in your pursuits, it’s crucial for you to remember that the mission is more valuable than yourself. The mission will satisfy you, the self will not; choose to push towards accomplishment regardless of your needs- all will be taken care of in the end.

-T