What Gives a Loser Like You the Audacity to Be Great?
I’ve always been inspired by the story of the meteoric rise of Japan in the 19th and early 20th century.
It’s one of the inspirations for The Viable Alternative.
Think about it for a minute. It had been isolated itself from the rest of the world for 200 years until 1854, when an American warship commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry invaded the Japanese shores and forced Japan under threat of violence to open her borders for trade.
Japan, in absolutely NO condition to go to war with a modern nation like America, due to its backwardness from 200 years of isolation, wisely complied with the American Naval Officer.
However, it was so embarrassed and disgusted by its stark wretchedness and backwardness, the emperor heralded its citizens on a movement to modernize and industrialize.
Scholars were sent around the world to different modern nations to study the educational, military, political, and economic systems of these countries and advise how they can adapt them to the Japanese culture.
Forming their own unique model from what they observed from each of the Western nations and combining it with the uniqueness of their own culture, they set ona path towards modernization, and within a generation, Japan was a modern nation with a modern military whose navy defeated Russia, a country who had years and years of a head start, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1895.
Of course we know the rest of the history Japan in the first half of the 20th century. They went on to overrun much of Asia, including China, Korea and the Philippines, and also attack Pearl Harbor, the nation that forced them to open up their borders almost a century earlier. It went on to give that country a run for its money in WWII.
Now, what gave a non-White, non-European nation the right to rise to a status only attained by Western nations in the modern world?
What gave them the gall to transform itself to a level of power comparable to Western nations?
Who were a bunch of “short, yellow, people with funny eyes who eat rice” to boldly challenge the MIGHTY America?
The answer is self-appointment.
Japan didn’t wait for anybody to give them the right to rise from a backward, isolated nation to a mdern power. It didn’t ask for permission from the “Club of Modern Nations,” rather it gave its own self the permission, appointed itself the right to be successful and boldly went after what it wanted.
Many of us have great desires lying on top of our hearts, we have an urge to do or be something great, but we’re angry, frustrated and demoralized because we’re waiting around for someone to give us the permission to go after these things when it’s up to us to say, “Screw everyone else, I give MYSELF the permission to be, do or have whatever I want.”
Many a great person was able to rise from the doldrums of poverty, oppression, ridicule, scorn, slavery, obscurity, or imprisonment to immortality because they were simply willing to appoint themselves the right to be successful by taking the first of a series of consistent series of steps on a path that catapulted them to greatness.
Self-appointment is a mindset with which you recognize that the biggest hope in your life begins with YOU, and that you’re your biggest saviour. Sure, you need the help of others along the way, but by appointing yourself the right to be great, not only are you more likely to find a helping hand, but you’ll be best situated to take advantage of a helping hand when it presents itself.
When you give yourself the permission to be great, you take back your power that you once had given away to those whose permission you sought to go after the life you want.
You’re also now able to drop the resentment, bitterness and anger you felt towards others for not giving you the permission to be successful and get self-esteem, self-respect, pride, and self-empowerment in return.
How dare a bunch of rag tag slaves in what is now present day Haiti, who were seen as nothing more than half human, savages, fit for nothing better than to make their French slave masters rich, revolt, play the European powers against one another to permanently drive the French off their island, and become the first Black nation of the Western Hemisphere and the first nation in recorded history to be founded by a successful slave revolt?
Self appointment was the culprit.
How dare the original thirteen colonies of what is now the United States of America declare itself independent from the world superpower of that time, Great Britain, and challenge her with its comparatively puny, ill trained and vastly outmatched army? How dare they win that war and develop from a weak nation to a world power within 150 years?
Again, self appointment can be blamed.
How dare a bunch of naked African savages who were supposed to be swinging off of trees, go against the wishes of the British, their former colonial master, by daring to secede from the artificial, colonial creation of Nigeria and creating the sovereign state of Biafra, in which they waged a war of independence against the much better equipped Nigerian army, where blockaded by land and sea, were able to hold out for two and a half years and pull of indigenous technological feats unparalleled by any other African country at that time including among many others, refining their own oil in the jungle, creating their own braking fluid for their cars out of coconut oil and manufacturing their own weapons?
Self appointment is the answer once again.
That damn self-appointment, always getting in the way of people’s plans to keep others down and in the way of their negative perceptions of others!
Self-appointment is that AUDACITY to be great despite the haters, naysayers, saboteurs, oppressors and the insults.
At 20 years old, self-appointment gave me that sheer audacity to adopt the mindset of that guy who was able to start attracting and dating attractive women despite the fact that in Middle School, I was called a complete, utter loser by the “cool kids” and reprimanded if I showed any instance of thinking “high” of myself or uttering any of the “in” slang at the time because I wasn’t cool enough to do so, and in high school called “ugly” by both guys and girls because I had severe cystic acne.
Appointing yourself the right to be do or have whatever you want in life is simply a matter of looking at those who you admire or inspire you, and accepting that you’re worthy of the same thing for yourself in a way that’s tailor made for who you uniquely are.
It’s imagining for yourself what others have, fully accepting it’s your birthright to be, do or have it. This doesn’t mean feeling entitled to what others worked hard for so that you go and forcefully take what doesn’t belong to you, rather it means that believe you’re entitled to your own unique success.
It’s becoming totally and utterly comfortable with the fact that whatever lofty goal you have is your absolute right to attain it.
If there is anything you want to do, be or have in life, simply appoint yourself the right to have it, and then go get it! You have the right not because anyone said you did, but because YOU said you did.
This is The Viable Alternative.
Hope this helps,
Ike Love
