Ain't No Rest For No One

Most of us are probably aware of the popular song, "Ain't no rest for the wicked", which uses the idea that people lose integrity to support their families. But why? Movies like Aladdin, Fun with Dick and Jane, or Oliver Twist all seem to show moments of desperation in which morals may fall out of line in trying to maintain or improving your livelihood; but, each of us, go through the process of trying to securing a nest bed where we are able to come home every night and take care of our families. This isn't unique to the people Ever since man has existed this has been part of our lives and sometimes it becomes very bleak. For families with growing debt, dead-end jobs, or other situations which amplify the problem of provision, what are the real options?

It is a tough situation for anyone, not just a few people here and there. It's hard to truly prepare for situations you can't predict. It's not like you can quit your job when it isn't meeting your expectations or use all your money to pay off your debt. The need for food each day, rent each month, and other payments which take away from your salary leave you living paycheck to paycheck. This leaves the moral dilemma of how to handle these situations. Two sides of the argument include providing for your family by any means is appropriate or the converse that this is never appropriate because you are taking from others.

"A man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyanny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself." -James Allen

Every situation is different and there doesn't seem to be an easy fix. People make choices and you have to decide what is right for your family within the constraints that you have. These are morals which we resolve to keep throughout our lives. We need to understand our choices and just do the best we can do. As little as it may help in the end, everything is based on our character. This, in my opinion, is where we should start first.

The Costs of Decision Making

This is going to be a short post about a sensitive topic for me.

When making a decision, we generally have many choices. These choices provide us with some level of benefit, whether in money or happiness, though these rewards may not be initially obvious. When we are given choices, we normally take the highest return. Well, that lowest return doesn't go away; it takes a new face. The face of an opportunity cost, or the cost of the next best alternative.

Opportunity costs arise everyday in our lives, every time we make a choice, or from our unwavering personality. Many people won't see this as a cost, but the sound-minded individual will see the benefit of seeing the options before a choice is made.

Suppose that your a brain surgeon and at your job you make about $100 per hour. Now suppose that you have to mow your lawn. You now have some choices about what to do with your lawn. You can either take the time to mow it for roughly an hour, or you can pay the neighbor boy to mow it for you. So, your goal is to maximize your return. So what do you do?

Forgetting about the stress of your job as a brain surgeon or other things that may come up, it is plain to see that you should probably pay your neighbor's kid $10 to mow the lawn while you go to work. But what if he won't do it for ten dollars? How much are you going to pay him?

Rationally, as long as you are making more from going to work then you are saving by paying the kid. This means that he could charge you just up to $99.99 before you become indifferent on whether to go to work or mow your lawn.

It may seem like non-sense, but look at it. If you mow your lawn, you lose the $100 that you could have made. If you go to work and pay the kid $10, then you'll be $90 richer. Now, if you pay him $99.99, then you still make a profit of $.01. That's more money than you would have gotten otherwise.

I've had many arguments with accountants regarding this. I've had long conversations with people talking about taking a long drive just to shop at a cheaper store. At what point is this beneficial? If you're spending $20 in gas to drive to the Wal-Mart across the state and you only spend about $100 on groceries, but the amount that you saved by doing so is less than $20, you're worse off!

What my point is, sometimes what you might think is better isn't really at all. It just seems like it on the surface. Many people think about this anyway when they try to find where the stores are cheaper, but there are additional costs that you have to take into account. But I will give this: If it's your morals not to shop at one store than another, then that's an entirely different story.

Lengthening Your Stride, Getting a Running Start

People always ask me how I'm able to do so much in a day or how I'm able to handle such heavy loads when it comes to projects and assignments. Since I've started college I've had a job, taken a minimum of 20 credits each semester, and still have been able to date and marry my wife. There was a woman yesterday, when she heard how many credits I'm taking this semester, apologized to me and felt sorry for me. When that happens, I wonder how people spend their time.

For starters, in my opinion, it doesn't have anything to do with intelligence or skill. It comes with traits which we learn over the years having tried to work smarter while reaching your goals; and I've learned quite a bit about work from my parents. Before starting each semester in college, I do my best to read the books which the teacher has assigned so I'm not trying to copy down what the teacher is saying. I'm able to pay attention and get more from the class. When I get a new assignment at work, or when projects are underway, I spend extra time that I have looking just a bit further into the project instead of trying to just keep up.

It seems that when I'm working with people, there are set times when they start working on a project. If the project doesn't start in a week, they don't start for a week. This is mainly taken from people in my classes would are trying to "have a life" and aren't too concerned about preparation. I've never really been able to have this kind of mindset and I'm sure that there are many others out there too who would agree that it's not something that they are able to do. But when it comes down to it, I call it drive, the mental ability to get going.

When you keep yourself in the day-by-day rituals, there are so many things that just come up and you're normally spending your time juggling all of the tasks and wondering why you don't have any time for yourself. Well, when you look at it, it makes sense. When you wait til the weekend to do your gardening, you're going to have much more weeds then if you did it throughout the week. It's all a matter of how you see objectives. I've met people who think that it's more work to handle things throughout the week, but in my opinion, it's not.

When you are taking things in small doses before hand, you're able to space things out and have control over the situation. It allows you to integrate the tasks into your life rather than having everything thrown into your lap and being expected to handle it. You'll notice the change when you start to take control. As it would seem, when you get a running start into a project you're not only able to think more about the task at hand, but you get to choose how to react to the situation.

What I'm trying to say is, quicken your pace and widen your outlook. It may seem hard to get into the habit of tackling things when they come up, but it will ease the stress in your life. There are times when we will struggle with some things, but knowing that you will earlier is better than finding out when the time comes to prove yourself.

How to Learn Math

I was talking with one of my friends recently about math. When you're in elementary school, some teachers do a really good job at helping you to understand math, but are we learning how to learn math? Every one has their own way of learning, but math is something different. In my opinion, it requires a different kind of mind. It requires you to think about the problem at hand and to find the solution that fits it. For every math problem, there is a solution. Some people will tell you that there are multiple solutions, but that is only true for proof work. In the end, for most of the problems that people other than math majors will work on are problems which have a unique solution.

So one of the things that I believe people need most in learning math are examples. I think that people need to see how the method applies to what you are doing. As you browse throughout the internet for help with math, normally people help you discover the answer, but that's if you're lucky enough to have someone there with you. People try to offer suggestions about what to do, but most of the times it's the steps that you are having difficulty with. Visualization is the key. Though this will be harder when you get to advanced math courses in college, but generally things can be visualized by simple means. The problem is, in my opinion and the opinion of my friends, is that math books or teachers don't take the time to offer a large variety of examples and when the test comes, it's something that you've never seen.

Another thing that people struggle with is thinking about the problem. If you don't love math, you just want to be done with the problem and move on to the next homework assignment. This seems to be why math teachers prefer to try to force you to think about the problem. There have been many times in my math career that teachers have been little to no help. But it is true, sometimes you just aren't applying yourself to the problem. Math has many benefits in life. It is an ability that not a lot of people have, but there seem to be countless uses and it pervades just about every science in one manner or another.

Therefore, I have decided that I am going to try to do what many people do not. I am going to try to go through and solve math problems with the steps and demonstrate the methods that you have to use to find the answers. I don't have a webcam to create videos, but I will try my best to make things easy to follow without losing people. This includes using every step and process which is described. I will also categorize these math problems into a list which can be divided by topic, but I am going to start with Algebra and progress from there. Because there is also a specific need for Pre-Calculus right now, I will also be diving into this. To find the blog, click here.

Other useful resources which I have suggested to friends and family are:
Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy and PatrickJMT (thanks to Bianco)

Is Buying a House Still an Issue?

In the United States, roughly one-third of the population owns their homes outright with no mortgage debt; however, of those people in the United States which have mortgages or debt, the average value rose a substantial 40% from the turn of the century. In 2008, when the housing bubble burst, theories circulated as to the cause. One theory deals with lenders who were issuing loans to high-risk individuals in anticipation that they would default and insurance companies would pay them the indebted amount. This previously legal method has been combated by new government regulations and  the complexity of issuing loans has increased.

In July of 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and the Consumer Protection Act were passed which increased the restrictions on lending. For many Americans, this causes discouragement in buying a home and lending offices claim that stricter regulations will make it difficult for small offices to survive, but what are the benefits to society that surround stricter guidelines?

It would appear that the government is trying to prevent another bubble from forming, which, I believe, is exactly the point. Increased complexity in lending may make things more difficult to borrow, but this also implies that applicants must find some other alternative, such as pursuing housing which they can already afford. In the meanwhile, this may correspond to a lower demand for buying homes and causing the prices of homes to decrease. Eventually, as the market returns to equilibrium, buyers and sellers in the market will find each other again and prices will begin to stabilize.

With this crisis and reform came the inception of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.This office acts as a organizational watch dog to look out for consumer interests acting under the direction of a senate appointed director. For additional information see the resources below.

Resources:
Banking Senate
Dodd-Frank Cheat Sheet

Virtues of Starting a Blog and Keeping it Going

While the simplicity of accessing the internet is growing, we see large surges in social networking sites, media sites, and blogs. As Facebook has become a common household name with nearly 850 million users, (Linkedin with nearly 130 million users and Google+ with nearly 100 million users), we can only expect that this form of communication will grow. The dynamic of social networking, in essence, is centered around communicating quickly with people nearby and around the world within seconds. Most of this communication consists of "likes" and brief comments, but for many users, they want the ability to give and receive information in moderate doses.

Starting a blog is an effective way to communicate a variety of thoughts throughout your life. Most of the blogs which I've read are generally economic items which people write. I have a few blogs which relate to various aspects of my life where I can collaborate my thoughts and make, what I hope are, useful citations. When you start a blog, it never hurts to experiment with ideas just to get the ball rolling. If the writing could use a little work, don't stress, you'll find things and get suggestions from people that happen to come on your blog.

When I was looking for things to put in my SharePoint blog (if you don't know what that is, feel free to check it out), I used Google Trends to find out what people were having the most questions about in SharePoint and I'd write about those things since I work with SharePoint everyday. It's a means of finding a little niche that you can find your way into.

One of the reasons why you may want to start a blog is to earn money. Most domain servers will charge you a little each month to keep your site going, but Google+ is free to use and provides a number of resources for your disposal, especially if you are just beginning to blog. I've explore a few of the other ones and settled here. But probably the information which you are looking for is Google Adsense.

Google Adsense is designed to bring advertisers to your site. There is a review process that they will perform before you can start using their service, but this shouldn't take too long. Once you start getting advertisements, you get paid money every time that someone views your blog, when they click on an advertisement, or buy something by way of an advertisement on your site. At first it doesn't grow quickly, but the money will grow quickly.

Most of the problems which people have when it comes to getting approved is that they do it too early before they have a significant amount of content, or traffic, to try to get advertisers to want to advertise. Remember, they're paying to be there, so they want to be able to get the clicks. If you're using blogger then going to the layout menu you can have Google place the ads for you in your site and you can add "gadgets" which may also be adds. Each click won't generate a lot of money, but the possibilities are large. And don't worry about what ads show up, they have a program that adapts the content to the advertisers.

Another useful tool for getting information about how your site is performing is Google Analytics. Be patient as you start out because there probably won't be a lot of traffic, but it will pick up as you keep going. Post the code that they give you in the <head> portion of the HTML code and it will take care of the rest.

In order to make your searches more effective, you can also use Google Adwords. This will help people navigate to your sites by being pulled by more searches. It costs a little bit, not as much as you'd think, but it has large benefits for gaining an audience.

I started a blog original to collect my thoughts and write down my ideas and see what other people thought about them. You might want to make a blog for your family, a class, or something else, but it is a good opportunity for you to sit down and just think about what you are writing. The content will come as you begin thinking about your audience in general.

Taste the Culture, Broaden Your Circle

It's easy to find comfort in things which are familiar. I'm sure we've all found ourselves ordering the same things off the menu, taking the same routes to work each morning, getting into the habit of watching the same shows and re-runs day after day. When I was younger I recognized the necessity to try new things, but I did need some help to get out of my rut. It was others which breathed perspective into me.

An example from my life my not be the best, but it can help with the feeling of the daily routine. When I was in the Netherlands for nearly two years, I spent most of the day on buses, trams, or trains going from appointment to appointment. There wasn't much time to get out and actually experience the culture, or so I thought. One day, I was traveling on a bus in the afternoon on a busy day and someone sat down next to me. For some reason, I made a kind gesture and we started a conversation. We didn't really talk about much, but I remember that I felt more involved with life having just met someone new. Each day after that, I made it a goal to talk to someone different everyday, but just to talk about what they wanted to and not talk about myself. It was tricky at first, but I actually began to enjoy it. Eventually as I became more open to conversation, people actually started talking to me. I treated each person as a friend, someone that I hadn't seen in a long time, picking up where we left off. This has stuck with me ever since. Whether sitting in an airplane or waiting for a bus, being friendly can have rich effects on your life and how you feel. Many of the people that I've met have ranged from bankers, helicopter pilots, doctors, students, tourists, and many others which had interesting stories to tell.

Another story happened while I was in Tokyo. While my brother and I were looking for a place to eat it was getting dark so we walked into a nearby ramen shop. Being two tall Americans, we more than stood out. When we were seated, we looked at the menu, pointed at something that looked decent, and took in the environment. Moments later, a man came in and was seated next to me. I didn't think it would be polite to not try to start a conversation, so in my bad Japanese I said, "Nice weather, yes?" and this man's eyes lit up. We began a nice conversation and we finished our meals at about the same time. To make a memory of the moment, I had my brother take a photo of this man and me. While we walked to the cashier to pay, this man grabbed our check and said in his broken English, "You send me a copy of that photo, I'm paying for your food." It was a moment that I will never forget.

I only ever got to see the Windmills a couple times in the Netherlands, I only went to Tokyo Disneyland once, and those memories are nice, but it was the people that I remember most. It is impossible to imagine what will happen each day and how it might affect your life. There are so many new people to meet, languages to learn, and places to go. But when it comes to meeting new people, I've always maintained that you need to be able to communicate with someone in the manner which best suits them. To truly understand their perspective, you need to speak THEIR language. My personal theme for this post is to get out of the routine, try something different and be open to new experiences. It's your life to live.

Save the Cook!

The ability to cook is underrated. People generally think that it is easier, which is most of the time, to just order out or eat fast food. Though the fast food culture has taken over most of the eating habits of the United States and other countries. The main appeal is the luxury of not having to cook, but at what cost?

Most of the time we are aware that eating out has both health issues and costs more. When it comes time to decide what to eat for dinner, it is easy to justify going to grab a hamburger or pizza. We don't think anything of a dollar here or there, but normally our meals range from $3 to $7 every when we aren't buying much.

When I was in high school, my best friend and I would go to lunch everyday because the food at the cafeteria was both expensive and disgusting. Occasionally, we would go to our houses to eat meals that were prepared or ready there, but generally we would spend about $5 on things nearby. When you consider how many days of school there are and how much each meal costs, we reasoned that we spent nearly $800 during the school year on food. Now imagine how much money cooking at home costs. Generally it is much cheaper, but you're also inclined to eat less. But these costs are only one meal in the day. How much more are you spending on breakfast and dinner?

People seem to suffer from the mentality of, "I bought it, so I have to eat it." The idea of saving what you have left over from lunch isn't something that you like to do. This is compounded by the fact that you have to reason what you want to eat before-hand. This means that you have to judge the amount that you want to eat and if you are wrong you are either hungry or have too much food. When you are hungry you will most likely try to find food that is in vending machines nearby to delight from, but these cost much more than from the store.

The principle of eating at home or bringing food from home with you is something that shouldn't be overrated. The cost of food is too high when you take into account all of the other factors which go into the decision process. Though there may be times when you are craving something, most of the time you just need something to fill your stomach. Learning to wait or to cook can save you money.

The technicalities of learning how to cook are life principles that should be learned at a young age, or as young as you can get. This helps you understand your tastes better, but also inspires you to eat healthier, spend your money wiser on foods, and be satisfied. There are times when it will be frustrating learning how to cook, but it is an investment. On average, I try to eat roughly $2 per meal. This doesn't go very far when you're on the go, but at home it can be pretty filling.

When you consider a bag of flour, eggs, and milk goes a long way when you cook right, the added cost comes to about $10. With these items, you can easily make pancakes or other breakfast items throughout the week, or space it out and save money. A typical meal of pancakes will cost you $.50 to $1 when you make it at home. Though there are added costs, you will generally stay below your budget.

There are many foods which you can make for on the go, so don't get tricked into spending excess money on fast-food which puts pressure on your budget. Take come time to learn how to cook. It's a life lesson that tastes better than others.

Common Sense

There is nothing in life that is more note-worthy than good ol' fashion common sense. There are some people, as we would see day by day, seem to lack the common sense it would take to wake up in the morning. Most of us while reading this will even think of someone in particular when we think of people who lack common sense. But what do we mean by common sense and is it something truly common?

Generally, as we perform rudimentary tasks throughout the day it would seem almost obvious what things we would need to do to finish a task. Simple things are normally in the common sense category. Things like sweeping the floor, how to use a straw, or sharpening a pencil. It would seem almost ironic for someone to ask how to do these tasks and it is frustrating when they do it wrong.

In my mind, common sense isn't something that is naturally endowed in the human mind, but it is the manner of thinking that is cultivated in the mind, the ability to look at a task a see how things must naturally come together. To see the relations between objects might seem harder than necessary for the infant or even the adult, the mind seems to make the connections without our conscious thought. These connections, the ones which are solved before our knowing how to work the mechanism, is common sense.

But why do people seem to lack this common sense? That's an easy question when you really start to think about it. We've come to some point in the human condition where some people are allowed to be tolerated in their inability to the point where the burden is placed on us to fill their needs. They do not develop the basic, concrete understanding necessary to survive on their own.

It is not my place, nor can I know, where people with these skills will end up. Things can happen everyday which seem to open our eyes to some new possibilities which we can undertake to learn how the world works. We see it in commercials everyday as if it is almost routine. Someone is given a simple task that they do not know how to perform because they've never done it themselves.

Now, my goal in posting this is not to inspire people to seek out people and knock some common sense into their skulls. My goal is to inspire people to look deeper and try to look out for new possibilities and try to make the connections necessary to make progress in their lives both personally and professionally. Don't dwell on the people who don't seem to have common sense, but don't coddle them either. Everyone should seek opportunities to increase their intuition. Take advantage of your senses and surpass the common.

Why Some People Get Raises and Others Don't

My dad is a pretty smart guy. He often takes time to teach me lessons which I don't believe he thinks I listen to. For most parents, this is understandable, but he has many valuable lessons which I have notes of throughout my journals. One of them is a quote which my wife hears me say often, "Just do what you need to do." From a personal perspective this is useful advice, but you need to be careful when applying it to your profession. In other words, learn what you need to do and do it better.

Recently, one of the lessons that my dad taught me was the principle of being successful at work. We often think that raises will come with time where you'll end up with what my wife almost got: a seven cent raise and little responsibility. Sometimes you find yourself in a position where you just have to live with it. Luckily, this wasn't the case, but here's how you might be able to prevent it.

In general, getting a raise in most careers is to compensate employees for the increased cost of living which comes each year due to inflation. The raises are small and generally don't provide extra benefit, just making you able to do the same things that you could before, assuming those things aren't luxurious. Most bosses don't like to give raises because costs increase as inflation grows, but you need money too. This reduces their profit and the ability for them to either expand or innovate.

So what warrants a raise? Make yourself necessary. This doesn't mean that you should start a commotion and make it necessary to keep you quiet. That's the line for replacement. Generally, I think the jobs that most people fill are easy to fill. The trick is to show that you are able to increase profits and keep that system working. It also works to show initiative, but you shouldn't get frustrated if it seems like people are ignoring your efforts if it's part of your job description already. In the grand scheme of things, it will be noticed.

What I have adopted in any job that I have gotten is the principle of knowing what your immediate superior does and anyone who is under you does. This will allow you to control your environment and be aware of everything that is taking place. This also allows you to take some of the pressure off of your boss and he will most likely thank you for this. In a good working environment, this attitude is rewarded.

Something that you should avoid is becoming too important. But why? It does seem counter-intuitive. Here's a circumstance which could happen, being too important in the position that you are in that they can't afford to promote you. This could be inevitable for a small company, but isn't unheard of for larger companies. The trick to avoid is while you are learning the duties of your boss, find a nice worker who you can teach to do your job. This way when promotions come around, you can take your boss's job and fill your old job with the other guy.

This method is also useful for people who are trying to ensure the security and flow of business. If you are too dependent on one person and he either quits or gets hit by a bus, your company isn't crippled.

On the part of the individual, you may want to consider this as you grow in your life. We should be making constant progress and not be stagnant in the career that we have. Even if you are comfortable in your career, being a valuable asset will show the company that you are worth keeping around. In keeping this goal and maintaining a good insight with the job that I am working and being able to take some of the heat off of both of my bosses I have been able to reap the benefits of more responsibility and maintain good work relations. In other words, this has been a good week for both me and my wife as we were able to increase our salaries.

Remember to Ask Questions

Anyone who knows me is aware that it is hard for me to ask others for help when it comes to understanding certain material. Sometimes, this is something that needs to happen in order for learning to improve, to understand the requirements of your job better, or simply to build relations with others. As we become able to expand this ability, we will find that our ability to grow will be magnified.

Why is this? When we open ourselves up to the opinions of others, we are able to broaden our scope and conquer those problems which we are struggling with. Most often, the misconceptions which we have in our minds are not so directly addressed to resolve the problem. When we leave those questions the way that they are, it becomes harder to fix, and anyone who has sought to correct a problem will know that it requirements a significant time commitment to correct.

Organizations as a whole like communication between those involved in certain projects. The ability to communicate well will expand the capabilities which you are able to accomplish. So much of our time is spent trying to work out all of the problems individually while there are people all around us attempting the same problems. Many people argue that they want to learn it for themselves, and that's a valuable trait to have, but this does not mean that when you stumble the option of help is not out of question.

At first, this seems like something that is only an option when you are in school and you are put into groups, but think beyond this. If you are assigned a project in your business and you are not exactly aware of how to accomplish a problem, how much harm would it cause to venture out to your family, friends, or even colleagues to solve the problems which you have encountered. Various social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, have groups which are full of people who are working in some field. I'm not saying that you need to expose everything about yourself, but to be able to communicate will allow you to be effective and perhaps become much more profitable.

There are, however, pitfalls to avoid which corresponds exactly to the people who fight against asking people for help, and that is that you get in the habit of taking the words of others with confidence. The purpose of communication is to ask questions, to unravel the mysteries in your mind and uproot the misconceptions before they fester. To simply resolve to copy the work of others will only add to your inability to think and you will lose everything that you are trying to learn.

In other words, be mindful of the problems that you are working on and learn how to grow. Don't shape yourself using someone else's measure, but be confident in what you are doing and if you aren't, study until you are. Don't give up, but learn how to use your resources.

Pruning Yourself and Bringing Growth

Recently, I was inspired by various plants in my terrarium. You see, my plants are stored in a glass case which we got for our wedding. There are four different plants in the terrarium that have previously appeared very healthy, until recently when we were staying at a motel and they weren't treated right. During this time, many of the leaves started to wilt and change colors. Other leaves started to decay. I was oddly worried for my plants and I tried watering them which doesn't seem to help much. But this is exactly what you shouldn't do.

You see, my inexperience with plants forced me to do some research. When a plant is dying you are still able to save it as long as you keep the various parts which are still living and prune off the parts which are dying. As much as it might hurt you to do so and you think that if you cut off certain parts it will surely die. As I began to prune off the wilting portions, I began to think about myself and the parts of my personality which are either fading away or dying. For people, we aren't necessarily able to cut off the parts of us which are dying when it comes to our mentality. Sometimes we need to do some mental pruning. But why?

With a plant, you prune off the leaves, you reduce the amount of sunlight it receives, and you limit the water. This limiting process forces the plant to recharge itself and fight for survival because that is the main goal of plants.

How often are we just sitting idly and fading away? When we lose ourselves and our perspective on life, we are subjecting ourselves to the decay which corrupts us with the complacent mentality we may be quite familiar with. Sometimes we need to take a leap of faith and reach a point where we are trying to survive. This will rejuvenate us and help us to find more pleasure in life.

Though it has been too soon to see how my plant will react to its new stature, I am confident that it will survive and I feel better when I walk into the room. We should all look into our lives and find what we can prune and what we need to survive whatever the problem may be. When you begin to broaden your scope, you will see that this applies to so many things. Remember, it will be a struggle, but that's how you blossom.