The reality about making changes, losing weight, creating new habits, starting a business or just doing something new is that too often we believe that the process is easy for everyone else.and they all have it figured out. That losing weight must be easy for everyone else because it isn’t easy for you. That starting a business should be easy because you see these people who you think are overnight successes be successful, so you think it should be easy too. But when you find out that there is a lot of blood, sweat and tears it is easy to back off because you tell yourself ‘ it shouldn’t be this hard, I must be doing it wrong. It can’t be this hard for everyone? Right?’
But the truth of the matter is that creating new habits, losing weight, starting that business or doing something that is just plain new to you requires you to change and grow. And for most of us, the changing and growing is pretty hard. If people were really honest with you, they would tell you that these things take some amount of effort and attention to attain and the sneaky truth about many of these things is all it really takes is consistently showing up. You might have to keep showing up for a long time, but if you keep showing up and keep working hard you will get better.
In Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, he talks about the 10,000 hour rule. That it takes 10,000 hours to fully master something. That’s a long time to actually master something, but it brings up an interesting point. Is being successful at some thing really about being lucky in finding that next big thing or is it about just putting in the work day in and day out? Most of the books I read out there about business and success are littered with tales of challenges and hurdles. They don’t go from point A to point B with ease. There usually is quite process involved in becoming the person that needs to be the right person for for arriving at point B. And maybe this thing called “Life” gives each of us the ups and downs from point A to point B to refine us into that right person?
If we stopped focusing on getting to the end of the journey and just focused on the journey itself and embrace the fact that some days will be good days, and some days you will eat the whole cake, but there is a lesson in it all.
Ironman and Ultraman champion, Hilary Biscay, in this video talks about the importance of just showing up and putting the time into anything. With enough time and effort and willingness to keep just heading in the direction you go, one foot in front of the other, you will get closer to your goals. Your goals can be really anything, but most goals can be achieved by putting in work and just keep on keeping on.
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Until next time…keep on keeping on.
