“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” Even after death, the words of Muhammad Ali will live forever and will always carry meaning. Too often in this life do we take the bad things as the worst and let it affect us mentally. When we feel emotions, we let them rule us. A bad morning suddenly becomes a bad day, a bad day leads to a bad week, and the cycle continues. The pebble wears us out, not the mountains. If someone is rude or disrespectful or seems to annoy you, should that dampen your whole day? Plenty of people will be rude in life; plenty of people will do you wrong at one time or another. Carrying those emotions and letting them rule your day will never resolve anything. If we spend all of our time sulking about missed opportunities and fall outs in relationships, we leave ourselves with little time to appreciate the positives of life. This quote carries into the work world as well. We set goals from a young age that, over time, seem to become unobtainable. We underestimate our intelligence or we look at the work ahead and ponder whether the risk is worth the reward. The obstacles that we have to go through intimidate us and prevent us from even trying to reach the goals we’ve set. If you are working towards the career that will make you happy, don’t let the one class that you have to take one semester prevent you from pursuing that career. Don’t let one test affect your confidence. Nobody has reached success with no struggle, just the same as no man has lived happy and stress free. While ascending to success, there will always be pebbles that will find their way into your shoes. Take the shoes off, remove the pebbles, and keep climbing.