So Much Happier Blog
The Long, Slow Burn
“The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.”
Whatever the first weeks of 2019 have been like for you, and no matter what your goals are as you look ahead, I know without a doubt that there will be challenges in the cards for you. You probably know it too, and this knowledge can drive fears that may slow you down, confuse you, or just make the process of taking your daily actions a lot less fun. No one is immune from dreading issues that may arise, so we all need to find sources of inspiration to keep us going when things look drab, bleak, or otherwise not fun.
This week I wanted to share a great clip from motivational speaker Les Brown, who is full of wisdom and always entertaining. In this audio, he talks about how sometimes it takes so much longer than we want it to to get to our destination. Not only that, others may tell us that we’re getting nowhere fast, and we’re crazy to try. If you want that goal, you have to find ways to just keep at your efforts, knowing that there will be progress eventually. This may all sound fairly obvious, but I want you to hear his spin on this, because it’s memorable, and it may serve as one of those inspirations for you. If you don’t know his work, it may also give you someone else to follow for words of wisdom and inspiration, and most of us can use as many of these as we can get! Enjoy, and remember to Tap about and challenges that have already started to rear their heads in your path this year. We need both inspiration and learning, and constant acts of self-care in order to stay ready for our daily routines.
Pushing the Eject Button On Fear
“There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.”
As we finish the first week of 2019, you may be fully invested in New Year’s resolutions; you may be already resisting yours; or perhaps you didn’t make them at all. Whatever you choose to do around this tradition, I believe that the most important thing is always to pursue your goals in a steady flow of self-acceptance, calmly learning and readjusting all along the way. If this sounds “soft” or unlikely to produce, that’s because we’ve all been so indoctrinated with the idea that we’re inherently lazy that we may think we have to ratchet ourselves up into a state of mania in order to make any progress; that we have to constantly channel our inner drill sergeant if we’re going to motivate ourselves; that nothing but constant a$$ kicking will get the job done.
Sadly, for most people, this is a terrible idea, born of an extremely cynical view of human nature and thousands of years of raw fear seeming to be the best life preserver in a harsh world. From a purely evolutionary standpoint, this idea may have served us well, but as modern humans we suddenly find ourselves in the opposite of our traditional state—rather than fighting the elements to survive on a daily basis, we now inhabit an overpopulated planet on which the most valuable skills are intellectual and social—the more able we are to learn quickly as technology changes, and to negotiate and de-escalate violence in favor of fair long-term solutions, the more equipped we are for life in today’s world. It turns out that turning harshness and shame on anyone, including ourselves, tends to foment anger and resentment. Inspiration and genuine excitement about creating a better future are exponentially more powerful as an engine for getting us up and going each day, and for moving us through blocks and setbacks that will arise in the course of any project; they also tend to naturally motivate others around us in positive ways without any additional effort, because enthusiasm is infectious!
One of the reasons people tend to resist working with specific goals is that they don’t feel up to dealing with disappointment—which, by the way, will be a part of any process. Sorry, but that’s life on this chaotic planet! Unfortunately, many of us learn from observing adults around us when we’re young that disappointment=impending failure and doom, and it means that we’re stupid/cursed/incapable, or whatever other counterproductive adjective may have been on the menu. The truth is that disappointment may come and go, but it doesn’t have to mean anything except that you’re still learning about how to succeed. Handling negative emotions as they arise, and moving on when you’ve absorbed the helpful message in the feedback you’ve received (and had a chance to rest and renew), is the name of the game. Anytime you take an underwhelming result as a referendum on who you are or what’s possible for you is when you begin a downward spiral that will cost you a lot of time and pain. Falling back into fear and harshness as a hard-wired self-preservation habit is understandable, since throughout so much of human history we didn’t have a lot of time or mental and emotional space in which to consider and practice the best ways to do things. Now, though, we have a lot more access to the higher mind, and we can choose to come off autopilot by noticing our self-talk, and how we’re feeling as we go about our days. Shining a light on our own patterns and being willing to address the ones that don’t serve us through Tapping or some other method that accelerates change will allow us to grow far more quickly and easily in the directions we choose for ourselves.
Whether you’ve made specific resolutions or not, remember that it’s rare for any project to speed forward to the finish line without impediments. One of the most valuable skill sets you can ever acquire is the discernment to note challenging emotions and the patience to follow a process that will resolve them, help you build experiential knowledge, and get yourself moving again. This skill set renders you basically unstoppable! On the other hand, if you don’t build it, you’ll keep repeating the same patterns over and over without understanding why you can’t ever seem to get out of a confusing loop you can’t even see. It sure can seem like there’s just something wrong with you if this is where you are, but that’s not it. You’re in the groove of some pretty ancient wiring that needs attention and replacement. It may not happen overnight, but you can change the way you operate and break out of the old, constrictive ruts. When you do, you’ll see the tendency to rail at yourself for your imperfections for what it is—an old, outdated habit that you can replace with far more effective and happiness-inducing mental software.
Hit or Fold?
“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.”
Sometimes working on a personal project ends up, at some point, feeling like a real slog through the mud. What started as a seemingly great idea is now causing you to wonder whether you were crazy to have ever taken up the banner. You start to wonder whether you should give up and can it. This can be a hard decision, though, because what about all that time and effort you’ve already sunk into your project? No one enjoys feeling like time and energy has been wasted! You also have to confront how you’ll judge yourself if you walk away—will that mean you’re a loser/a failure/a (fill-in-the-blank)? It may be tougher to ignore this question if your project is visible to others, because then you end up thinking about how others might judge you as well. Is it better and more noble to keep throwing good resources into a mysterious hole in hopes that things will work out eventually than is is to quit too early, and maybe never be sure you did?
Making good decisions about what to do in this situation requires multiple dimensions of consideration. Your deliberations need not take long, but if you don’t cover these bases, you may be left with nagging uncertainty and an unnecessary hit to your confidence. Here are the areas that I recommend you explore before making your final decision:
- Physical. Are you guilty of ignoring your own basic human needs (sleep, nutrition, exercise/movement)? If so, you may need to rely on answers within the other areas to make your decision, because ignoring your body over time will make everything feel like a slog! It’s fairly trendy in some circles to claim that only weaklings need these things, and “real men,” “warriors,” “entrepreneurs,” or whoever, can power through without without all those silly indulgences the peons distract themselves with. I’m sorry to break it to you, but this is an old-fashioned myth left over from less educated times! We now know that without these things, the body, and the brain that resides within as an inextricable part of it, falters, struggles, and ages far more quickly than necessary. You can use your precious energy to rail against the fact that you can only experience life on planet Earth in a body that has limitations, OR you can learn to choose the simple decisions that allow you the joy and fulfillment of functioning at peak capacity. Like adequate sleep and healthy food. Which would you rather?
- Mental. Our culture is very focused on logic, so this area should be familiar to you. Logic is, of course, an amazing tool for assessing where you are, extrapolating where you're headed based on this, and figuring out how you might want to change course. If you're not great at thinking through things logically and analyzing your situation, find someone with more skill in and enthusiasm for this area who can help you do this. If you think things are taking way too long, or you just don't have what it takes to reach your goal realistically, you may be right that there's something you're missing. That may not mean you can't fix it, but isolating the problem, where it lives, and how to address it may take some digging. Access to the super-computing power of the mind is one of the benefits of being human, so let's not leave its powers on the table in our decision making!
- Creative. Once you've figured out what the problem seems to be, you need to get out of pure logic and turn on your natural, playful creativity. This can be tough when you're stressed out, so you may need some help here too. You can search the Internet on the topic in question, find a book on how others have solved similar issues, or rope in a friend to troubleshoot how you might bust up your impasse and move forward more productively. The problem might even be that you just forgot to have fun and bring creativity to the daily work you've been doing on your project. That'll kill anyone's enthusiasm over time. Life is supposed to include elements of fun. If your project doesn't have any, you'll feel like something is wrong, when it's just that you need to loosen up a little to make it over the long haul.
- Emotional. That brings us to the emotional side of things, another area where we may have been taught there's nothing important to learn and we should just sweep everything that comes up under the rug! But emotions exist for a reason, and they're an important tool in our toolbox, even if we're not yet sure how to wring the magic out of them. In order to trace the emotional connections to our projects, attention and the openness to decoding hidden meanings is required. Yes, you may have to devote some actual time and attention to this! You may feel like this is a self-indulgent idea, but that's likely because you've never been taught what to do to get helpful results out of such time with your emotions. Tapping/EFT is an incredibly productive tool in helping you to stay calm through the act of creating openness to the emotional realm, and in gaining clarity about what's really going on in your emotional states and why. That clarity doesn't necessarily arise immediately, but it tends to result after you've done some Tapping on exactly how you feel without filters or judgment. Sometimes this is all you and your project need. Once you've blown off some steam and allowed yourself to express what seems true, the clarity starts to arrive, and new perspectives on possible solutions often effortlessly appear. However, you may find that your emotions tell you some truths about what you really want that you've been unwilling to look at. This can help you make new decisions that will serve you better. Sometimes you might even decide to end the project as previously imagined. Sometimes you learn as you go that the realities of reaching your goal are not acceptable to you, not healthy for you, or just not something you're ready for at this time. Accepting this may be the best choice even if it doesn't seem entirely logical to you or others.
- Spiritual. This is the hardest area to quantify, because spiritual experiences often defy explanation. We all have this part of us that is an "x" factor, explain it as you will. Sometimes, you just experience a strong knowingness that something is or isn't true for you, or right for you, or good for you despite how it looks on the surface. Often this part of you speaks in desires and joys that are unique to you. Again, if this isn't an area you feel comfortable with, you can consult others who live more easily in this space and see if anything they have to offer resonates with you. But without taking it into account in some way, you may be missing an important piece of the picture.
Sometimes, when you're hung up with a project, something has changed with circumstances, and you just need to recover from the shock and get more creative. Sometimes, you're tired and frustrated, and you need a break or to bring your sense of fun back into play. Sometimes, what has changed is you, and the truth is that you no longer really want to support the project at all.
Once you have a better sense of all this, the final challenge is accepting the good work you've done on the decision, and finding a way to let go of any worries about what it means about you, the world, and your future potential. This is another area in which Tapping can be a life saver. It can help you work through any resistance to doing what you think is best that arises because of your (or your perception of or anticipation of others') judgment or fears. You have a choice as far as what meaning to assign to the events of your life. When you forget that, you become a victim to every outside influence.
Making truly good decisions, ones you can look back on with satisfaction because you did the best you could with the knowledge that you had at the time, is a process best served by considering numerous areas of inquiry. When you've done this to the best of your abilities and used all the tools you have to make your peace with what you choose, you can get back to putting your energy toward what you really want, and working toward it with renewed resolve and patience. Life involves work, but if it feels like every moment of yours is tiresome, it's time to stop and consider whether new decisions are in order, or whether you're already on the best path and just dealing with the challenges of the journey.
Being Stuck ≠ Failure
“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.”
Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a project that started to seem like it would never end? In my experience, this is what stops people from getting to their goals more often than anything else. Once you start telling yourself that you'll never arrive where you want to go, your energy and creativity will dissipate, and you'll probably quit on your project and feel like you failed.
Most likely, what actually happened there is that you encountered a problem you didn't know how to solve. That's it. Nothing irreparable happened, you just couldn't see a way forward, you panicked, and you jumped to a conclusion that may not have been true. The problem isn't that you had the thought that your project was over—we all get discouraged sometimes—the problem is that you didn't have the coping mechanisms in place to weather the emotional storm and come back to the table in a sufficiently calm and creative state to rejig your plan.
This happens to the best of us, but it doesn't have to be a permanent state of affairs. We fall into this pattern and then do what we do for a few main reasons. Once you understand what they are, you can review them when you feel stuck to see which one applies, and most likely find a way around the problem.
- Reflexive self-judgment. This is a bad habit we pick up from others when we're young, and if we don't find a way to arrest it, it remains a corrosive force in our lives. One of the reasons regular meditation can be so helpful is that the mind naturally has a tendency to assess and judge—that's what it's good at, and it's a helpful talent! Unfortunately, humans also have a tendency to believe that the mind is the totality of who we are. It makes sense, after all, given that the mind is a loud, constant voice that is always demanding our attention. Until you learn to calm it down, it's difficult to hear from the body, the heart (emotional self) or the spirit. Becoming aware that the analytical messages from your mind are not absolute truth, and can and should be rejected purposefully if they're not helpful, is a skill that takes some doing. It's also necessary if you're going to get out from under the thumb of the negative self-talk that the mind will blare at you when you're uncertain about what to do next.
- We have evolved to be highly risk averse. This also makes a lot of sense when staying alive is a daily struggle, but for people in developed countries that are not in the midst of war or other constant violence, our first reactions may be unnecessarily limiting; being outside one's comfort zone and trying new things can bring up intense fear that may be irrational, but has the power to stop us nonetheless. One of the reasons I love Tapping so much is that it can assist us in calming this fear/stress response when it's clearly not necessary or appropriate for the reality we're facing.
- The gap between who we currently are and who we'd need to become in order to finish the project seems too large, and we get overwhelmed. In order to progress in any process, we need to be able to toggle back and forth between the big-picture view and the granular view in which only the next task is primary. If we only look at the big picture, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the sum total of all things you still need to do, some of which you probably don't have any idea how to do yet. On the other hand, if you get too bogged down in the details, you'll start to get annoyed, lose inspiration, and want to throw in the towel. You need to remember that other tasks are coming, some of which will be more fun, and refocus on what you're doing it all for. A little fantasizing about reaching the goal can bring back the positivity you need. Knowing which view is most helpful at any given time takes practice, and it's a skill that, like any other, can be learned. We can also choose to get help with parts of a project we don't want to do! There's no rule that we have to struggle in silence, though we may have become convinced by someone else's poor belief system that receiving help is a sign of weakness. Cooperation helps everyone to win bigger and faster. It's smart to leverage it when you have the opportunity. Find someone with knowledge to share, find a buddy to help you stay motivated, find a coach or adviser to review overall strategy and implementation, or find a partner to share the burden and the glory of your project. Frustration and overwhelm can both be improved by teaming up with others.
These may not be the only things you feel stop your progress, but I bet they cover a lot of your most treacherous ground. Giving up on a project completely, or for the foreseeable future, may very rarely be a wise choice, but most of the time it leads to unnecessary heartbreak and disappointment that can be hard to recover from. Before you consider quitting, take some time to breathe, think, rest, and allow your creativity to return. There's probably a solution if you're willing to persist.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
“Endure and persist; this pain will turn to good by and by.”
There are many personal qualities that are important contributors to long-term success, but I’ve been writing about some of the most powerful ones over the last few weeks. Along with focus and creativity, persistence is absolutely necessary if you’re to keep yourself moving ever forward in life toward greater mastery of your chosen subject matter. Life has a way of surprising us with all manner of challenges no matter how well we plan. It’s easy to become discouraged by the constant disruptions and the necessary adjustments those challenges call upon us to make. In order to hang in there long enough to get where you want to go, you’ll need to be able to fire up your persistence day in and day out, almost no matter what may be happening around you. Yes, I know, that’s a tall order! I can hear some of you groaning already—this is starting to sound very un-fun.
And yet, what if you could find ways to maintain a calm sense of balance in the midst of chaos? What if you knew how to feed your confidence throughout challenge so that persistence didn’t seem like such a Herculean effort? These are just skills that can be learned, like any other. While some people will be more naturally gifted than others in any area, almost everyone can become at least functional in most skill sets. If you’re someone whose motivation gets knocked off course often, such that you’re often starting and stopping your efforts on things that really matter to you, here are some things to try on the road to becoming unstoppable.
· Remember the importance of focus? You’ll need to apply it to keep reminding yourself that persistence is a skill, not some magical quality that you weren’t born with, so why bother? Some people were taught the skills that feed persistence early, and some need to learn them later, but you have to acknowledge that it’s possible to learn them before you can effectively build them.
· You’ll also need to focus on what’s important to you consistently. Every day. Find ways to do this that appeal to you. It’s good to make this fun, so indulge yourself! If you like, write reminders to yourself on bright sticky notes and scatter them around where you’ll see them throughout the day, or make a recording of yourself repeating your top priorities and play it back in the car, or take a few minutes before you get out of bed and before you go to sleep at night to go over them in your mind and enjoy how they express the truth of you. There can be great joy in just repeating your most important values to yourself often. You might be surprised how enjoyable and inspiring this becomes.
· Practice reviewing your priorities before making decisions throughout your day. When you get into the habit of making sure that what’s most important to you is at least considered in your smallest decisions, you reinforce your ability to strategize with them always in mind. When the larger, more pivotal decisions come up, it will be easier to do the same, and you’ll become brilliant at making decisions that serve your values and goals.
· Keep a journal on decisions you made and how well they support your goals. This is an excellent way to give yourself credit for and celebrate good decisions, as well as notice decisions that you made in a hurry, forgetting to think through what would really be best for you and everyone else before charging ahead. If you don’t take time to frequently review what’s happening in your life, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and find that you’re getting nowhere. If you keep an eye on things, you have opportunities to do better every day, and you’ll progress much more quickly.
· Sometimes, you will have a bad day. You will need the love and support of at least a few people who you can count on to care about you no matter what. Practice reaching out to them when things aren’t terrible just to talk through a choice or share a win or a concern. This will make it more natural and easy for you to ask for attention when you really need it. Everyone needs support sometimes, and being reminded that someone else cares about you and believes in you helps restore your courage and keep you in the game.
· Manage your mind and your emotions. This cannot be said enough. Your mind will have a tendency to judge you, and others, and spiral into negativity. If you want to build persistence, you must gain the ability to arrest this cycle and bring your mind back to a neutral state at least, and practice more resourceful thinking. You don’t have to pretend that everything is always rosy, but if you’re always indulging in negativity, there’s no way you’re going to reach your goals—and if you did by some stroke of luck, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy them. Your emotions, in the moment at least, proceed from your thinking. There are also probably a bunch stuck in your system from previous events and thinking. For clearing those, the best technique I’ve ever found is EFT/Tapping, and it’s easy and free to do, so if you haven’t taken the time yet, learn the basics and try it! It’s so much easier to make good decisions when you’re not being overwhelmed with outdated mental and emotional habits left over from the past.
· Be stubborn. Every two-year-old knows how to do this like a champ. If you’ve forgotten how, channel your inner two-year-old and stamp your feet and yell, “No! No, no NO! I want _______!” at the top of your lungs every once in a while. Jump up and down for added effect. In addition to being hilarious and getting your blood pumping, this can reconnect you with your most basic desires and your conviction that you deserve to get them. Small children don’t spend time worrying about whether it’s prudent to want a pet unicorn, they just go ahead and want it. When you really connect with your desires, a lot of energy becomes available to you that you can use to take action. Your zest for life resurfaces. You can’t achieve goals if you’re always exhausted and don’t remember what all the effort is for. You have to let yourself want things in order to feel fully alive. Even if they seem impossible, your desires have important messages for you, and help you to keep finding your direction in the face of adversity.
A few caveats:
· Sometimes persistence is not the right tool for the job. If you’re persisting but continually missing the mark, it may be time for a new strategy and some course correction. Mindless persistence can end up looking a lot like reckless stupidity. You want to stay open to learning new things, and benefiting from outside perspectives.
· There will always be moments in any life when it’s time to take a break, either just for vacation, to rest and recharge, or because you’re going through a major transition of some sort—but when you can decide when to take time rather than always struggling to recover enough to get back on the horse, that’s a better place to be.
· Each of us has things we’re just really, really not suited for, in addition to things we’re great at. If you’ve applied yourself enough to gain some ability, but still loathe and get bogged down by a certain activity, it’s wise to partner with someone who is good at it, or find other ways to work around doing it.
· If you’re someone who is motivated by joining with others in some way, then by all means find a buddy who can help you keep at it on a daily basis, or pay a coach to help you stay focused on your goals and the actions you need to take to keep growing. Most people enjoy effort more if they can share accomplishments with others who cheer them on and appreciate their progress. Relationships make life, and our successes, more meaningful and more fun. Look, we brought it back around to fun! And we should. Why be so serious when we can build fun into all of our days with just the intention to do so? Balance means playing as well as we work, because play helps us to relax, de-stress, and regain creativity.
Maintaining persistence is a lifelong pursuit, like maintaining good health. We’re never done. But if you don’t ever get around to investing time and effort into creating basic habits that will keep you going, you can’t expect to live the kind of life you want. Start small if persistence is hard for you, but start! You can do this.
Onward and Upward
“The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist, the more likely your success.”
Just keep going. This is one of the most important principles I know of in the grand scheme of creating a successful life. You don’t have to always be running—you can walk, skip, hop or dance—and it’s ok to take a breather now and then when you need it. But if you can build the habit of just doing what you can to move forward a little bit every day, your progress toward what you want will be much faster than if you tend to exhaust yourself and drop out, or reconsider everything when you don’t get immediate results.
In such a fast-paced world, one in which we’ve been shown that everyone can become an “overnight” success by just getting on a reality T.V. show, our expectations may have become a bit unrealistic. For most people, success is the result of years of effort, which invariable include lots of ups and downs. Even those who seem to have gotten a big, lucky break have usually spent plenty of unglamorous time preparing and wondering at times if they’d ever get anywhere. Just like the rest of us!
I would suggest that this time of uncertainty and constant application yields precious abilities, even when it seems like nothing is happening. When we keep going despite resistance, worry, boredom, and annoyance, we’re building a habit of focus and healthy stubbornness that can serve us throughout life. Of course, I’m not implying that we should be so stubborn that we never consider our results and adjust course, or listen to the constructive feedback of others. I am in favor or each person dancing to their own drummer, though; you must ultimately be the one who decides what is right for you, and sometimes even the most well-intentioned advice must be ignored if it doesn’t seem right to you and for you. Some of the people who have invented the most astonishing things throughout history have been told over and over that creating what they saw in their mind’s eye was impossible. They kept going and perfected those things anyway. Healthy stubbornness in action!
There are many ways to keep yourself going when it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do so. I suggest broadening your tool set so that you have a better chance of staying in the game when the going gets frustrating. For example:
· Figure out what motivates you and roll with it. Are you someone whose abilities wake up when you’re moving toward something good, or working to outrun something you fear? Most of us respond somewhat to both, but you may find that one or the other is more effective for you. If you like to imagine moving toward something you want, remind yourself at least once a day what you’re working toward by imagining it vividly—preferably numerous times per day. This will bring you little surges of energy and the ability to recommit to your task every time you do it. You can also give yourself a little pep talk here and there and remind yourself of the progress you’ve made. If you get fired up when you imagine moving away from something bad, you can imagine something like that instead—see, hear, and feel people talking about how you failed and they knew you’d never amount to anything, etc. For most people, far more repetitions of the positive style of motivation is best, but throwing in a vision of what you definitely don’t want can sometimes add some spice to the mix.
· Take care of your physical needs without fail. Don’t skip meals, but keep them healthy. Get regular exercise, which builds energy and helps manage stress and lift your moods, and stretch your muscles to stay limber. Get at least seven hours of sleep per night. Brush and floss. You get the picture.
· Tell only the people you know you can trust to be supportive about your big goals. The last thing you need is a lot of negativity from people who think small, or are threatened by your unique vision.
· Commit to being a lifelong learner. No one starts off as an expert. We all build expertise in the areas we choose over time, and it never happens overnight. You don’t have to keep up with all information all the time, but you do need to keep up with your chosen field of interest, and again, it’s a fast-paced world out there. This will take some time and attention always if you want to be good at what you do, but it will also keep exposing you to the brilliance of others, which is inspiring.
· Find ways to blow off steam when you hit road blocks. Do or watch something that makes you laugh yourself silly. Spend time with friends. Volunteer for a worthy cause and get your mind off your own troubles. Spend some time on a hobby that just makes you feel good. Read biographies of successful people, who I guarantee went through hard times before they became famous and respected for their contributions. Write out your woes in a journal. Go outside and enjoy the natural world.
· Be willing to rethink your strategy as you try things and learn from your experiences. Consult others who have done something similar for advice and a change of perspective.
· If you crash and burn or fall off the wagon in some way, know that everyone experiences failure sometimes, and we often learn far more from these episodes than from we do from smooth sailing. Failures and mistakes may feel terrible when they’re happening, but they are not the end unless we decide they are. If you’re still alive, there’s still more left within you.
· Remind yourself that what you have to give is unique and important. Even if it’s not yet ready or not yet connecting with an audience or customers, someone out there needs and is waiting for what you have to offer.
For some people, succeeding to a level that feels satisfying takes far longer than they ever hoped or imagined. If this is you, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—this is a very common human experience. We can’t always know beforehand exactly what will get us to our destination. Just keep taking a step forward every time you can, keep learning, and above all, just keep going.