START: "Reality Check" pgs 53-64

Start: Punch Fear In The Face; Escape Average;
Do Work That Matters, Jon Acuff

When confronted with work and a reward, we all would prefer the reward first, and as soon as possible.  The road to awesome does not work that way.  You have to go through the learning years and the editing years, to successfully get to mastering, harvesting and guiding, every time you do something new. It requires working hard and sacrifice, energy and enthusiasm.  You can't skip stages.

Accelerate-
1- Start earlier.
2- Stand on the shoulders of giants.
3- Work harder and smarter.
4- Harvest the fields of someone else.

You don't need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now.  Regretting that you didn't start earlier is a distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow.  Just stay realistic.

The internet has changed our definition of expert. Anyone's opinion is utilized over professional and expert opinion.  People celebrate accomplishment-free celebrities.  The hidden message with that is that you don't have to do anything to be important.  Sometimes it comes across as everything else in life is instant.  People forget that practice makes a world of difference.  Your practice determines how you play or perform.  Nothing happens instantly and we shouldn't be expecting, or suggesting instantaneous results. We have this expectation that everything should be delivered quickly, immediately. We also need to keep in mind that we don't have to have state-of-the-art anything; technology changes every day.  The new phone you get today will be yesterday's news tomorrow.  Thinking this way, or long enough, makes you start to feel entitlement..  You start to believe that you're entitled to being an expert immediately.  You start to believe that you deserve to enter the land of harvesting.  When you climb the entitlement ladder, each rung takes you farther away from reality and what it really takes to reach awesome.  Your whole perception of the world changes from up there.  Other people start to look really tiny and insignificant, and "in the way."  People don't understand.  People don't understand the full scope of your greatness, but high on your ladder it all makes sense.  The great peril of the entitlement ladder is that it never ends.  Your judgment gets so skewed th at you eventually yell the sentence you used to make fun of other people saying.We can't climb the entitlement ladder.  Demanding something you haven't truly earned is a great way to get stuck in the land of learning. 

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Personal Notes:

It's really interesting to read this part of the book.  I see so much truth in the entitlement statements.  I personally know some people who display these characteristics.  Unfortunately I have thought some of these thoughts myself, and I'm not proud of that at all.  I've also been on the receiving end; I've been one of the "ants" beneath the ladder.  It really hurts when someone starts treating you like crap, because they feel so puffed up and entitled.