“What are you building?” is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. If I asked you right now, would you have an answer?

Are you building a brand or a business? A family and a place to call home? A set of tools or skills? A base of knowledge or area of expertise? A body of work? A good reputation or a lasting legacy? A useful product or a better process or a smarter system? Healthier habits? Stronger relationships? Financial security? Endurance, strength or resilience? Courage, connection or community?

Life can easily become a treadmill, a constant struggle to keep up, a race that leads to hustling faster and faster yet gets you nowhere. But you keep running anyway, afraid that if you did somehow manage to stop and take a breath that you’d quickly be left behind, discarded and forgotten.

The way out is to build something. Something of value. Something real and important and useful. Something you care about, that you can be proud of, that you think matters and will make a difference. Something that will compound over time. Something that you can safely take a break from and pick back up again. Something with staying power, that's built to last.

That's not easy to do. It requires strategic thinking, long-term planning and deliberate action. It requires investing time, energy and money. It involves persevering through a lot of painful practice, constant learning, tough feedback, trials and errors, false starts, and setbacks. Growth, commitment and consistency will be necessary.

It's a lot of work to create a vision and then to bring that vision to life. But in the long run, over the course of a lifetime, it's far more rewarding, meaningful and sustainable than the alternative.

Great work, great contributions, great lives don't appear out of nowhere. They're built. Day by day. Brick by brick.

To paraphrase a Chinese proverb, the best time to start building something was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

The next time someone asks, “What are you building?” what will you say?

A clear and thoughtful answer is required. Because you're either building a better life or waiting for a day that will never come.

Figure out what you want to build, grab a hammer, and get to work.

Steele