Risk.

Risk, failure, and ineptitude.

They float around the minds and mouths of those aspirational souls willing to venture into hostile, unexplored, or unfamiliar territory.

Risk is sacrificing the current state for some elevation of self, with no guarantee that the plan will fall smoothly into place.

Failure is the moment when the ambition dies, when the exhausted voices in the mind win their screaming match with willpower.

Ineptitude is moving on from ambition, unsure where the heart and mind belong for the thrashing laid on them by risk and failure.

We all deal with this shit.

If these words float around your mind and mouth, creep into your daydreams, you’re on the right path.

It’s easy to hide from these words, to keep them locked away. How many people never dare to risk anything, to walk into the unfamiliar with full knowledge of the possibility of failure? How many people let the fear of ineptitude keep them chained to their present, with no desire for a better future?

Too fucking many.

If these words haunt you, you’re on the right path.

You’re in the arena.

Your knuckles are bloody, your shoes caked with dirt, your eyes narrow for another contender.

This is fucking war.

Because somewhere is a hall of warriors, a deep cave lined with thrones for those who Never Fucking Quit, who take their haunting doubts to the tallest mountain and throw them the fuck off, who wage war on the shallow weaknesses of modern man.

And those weaknesses are manifested every single day in the people glued to comfort, complacent in their untested lives, afraid of any hostile breath or challenge to their cushioned existence.

They run from risk, fear failure, and bask in their self-ordained ineptitude.

Not us.

Not those destined for that hall of warriors.

I’ve got a fucking throne waiting for me.

Do you?

When your values and beliefs expose some adventure, some pursuit, some ideal you must achieve, do not be like those complacent, afraid, glued-to-comfort people. Do not turn your back on risk, do not concern your thoughts with failure, and do not adopt fantasies of ineptitude.

When you see your path—that righteous journey for the sake of your stronger future—risk everything to achieve it, because even everything isn’t much at all compared to the grim future waiting for those who never venture into risk. 

And when risk—and all the sacrifices that come with it—is your momentum, failure shrinks in stature. Failure cannot live in the mind of one who embraces risk and sees its grand purpose, because failure is when ambition dies, when willpower loses to exhaustion and the battle is lost.

But this battle can’t be lost.

Because you’re in the arena.

Because your knuckles are bloody, your shoes caked with dirt, your eyes narrow for another contender.

Because this is fucking war.

And on this warpath you’ve left no emotional, mental, or spiritual retreat. It’s not an option. Risk is your momentum, failure is the wasted breath of the complacent, and ineptitude is crushed beneath the surety of your stride.

This is the eradication of complacency, that great crime against merit and achievement.

This is the warpath.

This is Never Fucking Quit.