The One Time Kanye West Got It Right

by Tanea Smith

Oh, Kanye. What can I say? Very little about a man I don’t know personally. What I will say from my own experience is that there’s a Kanye in every family. Yes, yours too! You know the cousin who shows up to the barbecue and everybody dead stops in the middle of eating their macaroni salad because nobody has a clue what they’re going to say or do. Be they male or female, every family has a cousin like him. As there are two sides to every coin, we’ve also come to learn there are two sides to Kanye West. There’s the Kanye who meets with Donald Trump for no reason that anyone would recognize as helpful. And there’s the Kanye who sells out an arena and goes on a rant simply because he feels like it. But there is also the Kanye I happen to love.

The artist who has given us such brilliance as “The College Dropout” and who was quoted in “The World According to Gayle” column in Oprah magazine several years ago:

Now, THAT is the Kanye I’d like to hear from on a consistent basis. Just put down your latte and let that sink in for a minute.

“Excellence is the bare minimum.” Because isn’t it? Good is okay, but GREAT is most certainly the goal, right? What does that mean for you? If that were to become the mantra for your life, how would it change the choices you make and how you move every day in the world?

Here are three ways we can get closer to our greatness:

• Define your awesome – Using pen and paper, a page out of your favorite journal, or a pencil and a napkin in your favorite café, write out what your awesome is. Not your cousin’s or the lady you follow obsessively on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Yours! Write it down. You need to see it in your own words. Is it launching your side hustle or losing that last 10 pounds so you can get back into your favorite pre-baby jeans? Maybe it’s rising a half hour earlier each day so you can master your meditation practice or take that step to go back to school.
• Give yourself a deadline – On a scale of 1 to 10 how important is your awesomeness to you? If it’s just a 2 no need to read to the end of this post. Because why? But if it’s between an 8.5 and a perfect 10 then you’re going to need a deadline. And not just any random Thursday, but rather a day that will be of significance to you. If you plan to be back in those jeans by your daughter’s first birthday, write it down and be sure to get a full body shot with your precious baby and your fabulous figure. Yes, Mama! Launching that side hustle “at some point” this summer? Well no, how about the Fourth of July? It’s Independence Day and if you work your hustle properly you could really have something to celebrate by Christmas. There’s no better gift we can give ourselves than the feeling of accomplishment.
• Keep your foot on the mark – Awesome ain’t easy! Your bare minimum has gotten you exactly nowhere thus far which means you have to do something different. The difference will come in the form of your “Front Row”. Trust me, you need people! Why? Because people who have tribes to encourage, motivate and hold them accountable to their goals get things done more often than not. Gyms are full of personal trainers helping women just like you hit that target weight. Women in corporate jobs who hate who want to launch side hustles come to hear women like me speak on my experience and give them tools to make the transition. No one has ever achieved anything amazing on their own. Identify three people who you can share your goal with and you can depend on to help you get to awesome.

Winners, you can only be sure of today. Not knowing what’s to come is part of the magic of being on this journey. But since we’re going to be marching anyway, shouldn’t we be doing the most instead of the least? Share your awesome with me in the comments and let’s encourage each other.

Save