You don’t need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now.

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 great distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow. As far as having a mom or dad who showed you the ropes, or a giant in your life, that’s fixable too. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find a giant, someone who is farther down the path than you. People who are awesome are usually surprisingly willing to share their wisdom if you ask humbly. You may not be able to skip stages, but you’d be amazed what a difference hustle, hard work, and the steps we’ll discuss in this book can make in your ability to shorten them. Just make sure that while you’re hustling you don’t start thinking you deserve more than you really do.

Whatever words you want to use, rescue thirty minutes to walk down your path to awesome. If you can’t—if the idea of setting your alarm thirty minutes earlier sounds horrible to you—then you may not be ready for awesome.

If your dream isn’t worth thirty minutes, you’ve either got the wrong dream or you’re just pretending you have one. If the minimum you’re willing to pay in order to be awesome is less than thirty minutes, you’d better go back to average. Nobody gets up early on the road to average. Nobody stays up late on the road to average. You can sleep in to your heart’s content or watch late-night TV until the infomercials begin to make perfect sense. Either way, you’re safe on the average road.

Don’t start getting up earlier on your road to awesome just because it worked in my life. Get up earlier because you want the best shot at success. Get up earlier because you want access to your best willpower. Get up earlier because you want the way your brain works and the way your physiology reacts to be your friend, not your foe.

I’d received a postcard from awesome, and it had two questions on it: 
1. If I died today, what would I regret not being able to do? 
2. Are those the things I’m spending time doing right now?

Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters by Jon Acuff