We are our own worst enemies.

The inability to face our greatest weaknesses or to curb bad habits is often what prevents us from becoming successful people.

We continue to indulge in our distractions. We chase stress relief and comfort rather than what would challenge our character and make us grow. It’s an endless cycle where if you don’t feed yourself anything good, you become accustomed to only the bad.

I was one of these people. I struggled with procrastination; delaying working on what I knew were massive priorities in my life if I ever wanted to achieve my goals. In school, I studied for tests at the last minute. At home, I disregarded simple tasks that would take me minutes if I got up and did them. When it came to the things I did enjoy, I was unable to limit how much I indulged, turning every pastime into an obsession and every substance into an addiction.

As I reflect on this time as a person who beat procrastination, I look at the reasons why:

Why did I feel the need to delay important things?

Why was I so afraid of the results of trying to work on something important?

Why was I unable to hold myself accountable for what clearly were mistakes?

How did I beat it?

It’s here I discovered the truth: I was who I was. At the time, there was no other way for me to be, so I was bound to make those mistakes. Until I discovered a different way of being, there was no way I’d be able to achieve anything but mistakes. Sometimes, that can only happen through experience or repeated pain.

You are not undone by the mistakes you make, but by how you handle them.

And how I handled them was with fear.

Fear of coming short.

Fear of not being good enough.

Fear of facing the truth of being a person who tried and failed at something.

Once I acknowledged the fear behind each of those habits, I started to realize that that is no way to go about living your life. Life should be about growth and challenge (and overcoming it), and for me to deprive myself of these experiences was to deprive myself of life itself.

So I made a change.

The change was that I decided I would no longer let fear dictate how I went about life.

I would live as someone with nothing to lose, because at the heart of it, I had everything to gain.

The results are that my life opened up. Blessing after blessing and opportunity after opportunity fell into my lap. I now live a life showered in the fruits of my efforts, grateful I decided to take the plunge.

The problem was that I was missing the fact that I didn’t know better. For me to discover what better could look like, I needed an example to demonstrate for me, or to have done the work of self-discovery and realize I had problems with this way of living.

I had neither.

And so, that is my mission. As I’ve learned lesson after lesson and grown to become someone I’m proud of being, I’d like to be an example. At whatever point you are on this journey, if this is able to inspire you, then I have accomplished my mission.

Until then, I will scream into the void. Even if the job is complete, I will keep going. It’s my duty to do so. If not for you, then for the me that had no example.

Live life, my friends, but do so knowing that what is destroying you is preventing you from living. Take a season to acknowledge your destructive behaviors and overcome them one by one.

I will be doing the same.

— Kobe