Holding On To A Dream Even When Success Is Not In Sight

Waiting is probably the most frustrating part of the pursuit. You spend months, maybe even years working on an idea, goal, or your dream… but don’t see the results of your efforts.

By far this is the most discouraging aspect of trying to succeed. It leads to the majority of people giving up.

If that wasn’t enough, there is the fact that most dreamers rarely get the support they crave when it’s needed the most… BEFORE the success shows up.

It’s almost as if the world is trying to tell you that pursuing more than what you already have and experience is against… nature.

You will face obstacle after obstacle. You will feel that with every ounce of energy you spend trying to deal with one challenge… there is another greater challenge waiting to crush your hopes.

And do you know what is even worse? There are some people who don’t have to struggle as hard you do. Who apply the strategies and half the effort you put in yet get better results a lot sooner.

Life is fair, right?

I guess I could end here and say… “Just be strong. Just hold on. Eventually, you will make it too.”

But that doesn’t sound encouraging at all, now does it?

Well… of course not.

So what can you do to save yourself from quitting on what could be the most important pursuit of your life?

That is an important question.

In fact, I want you to understand what I have just asked.

You see, despite all the challenges and frustration you may be facing… do you still have it within you to ask such a question?

If you do… then there is hope.

If you do… then you are beginning to understand the crucial role mindset plays in helping dreamers make progress towards their goals. Especially during the toughest times of the pursuit.

I hope you didn’t think that you would have an easy time pursuing your goal. Or that you could imagine all the possible challenges that would come your way. That’s not possible.

A dreamer isn’t just a person who ends up succeeding. A dreamer is also committed to finding out HOW to succeed.

The word is DREAMER… not DREAMT or DREAMED.

It is an action. It is continuous.

It’s not only about where you want to end up… but it is also about what you are willing to do to get there.

Never forget this.

Instead of counting how many battles you have fought… keep up with how you are doing and who you are becoming.

If you have a goal to lose weight, don’t compare how you look now to who you want to be like. Those two people could be so far apart that you may not feel encouraged to try.

Try instead, to look at what you are doing to lose weight daily.

Could you do it better than you were doing it yesterday? Could you focus only on becoming better at keeping up with the daily efforts? Who you were yesterday and who you are trying to be today are not that far apart.

If today, you decide to not go to the gym… could you maybe decide to stay away from fast food joints?

Tomorrow if you can’t stay away from eating cake because you got invited to a birthday party, could you probably avoid eating more than just a plate? Or stay away from soft drinks? Could you instead say that you will take one drink less than you normally would take when offered?

What about your goal to create a successful business…

If you have been trying hard to sell a product or service that people don’t seem to care about… what about your selling do you think you could do slightly better?

Could you probably change the way you present it? Could you probably change the market you are trying to push it to? Could you, maybe, cut down the price, at least for a while… to see if anything changes?

Are you willing to change anything small that would make today different from yesterday?

Don’t let your mind stay stuck on what doesn’t work or what has failed. Don’t look at other people’s efforts alone and judge your overall experience in trying to accomplish your goals.

You have to look at your current self and the person you were yesterday. Compete with that guy. Because that guy of yesterday represents one important inescapable truth… he or she wasn’t successful.

And if you don’t watch out, he/she will show up today to occupy the day as well with thoughts and actions that might lead to the same outcome.

This is especially important to think about if you have been applying the same efforts for a long time without much progress.

You have to be more concerned about who is trying to control your mind and life than what the market, competitors, or others are doing or saying.

If a business solely depends on external factors for success… then that business surely is in trouble. But I won’t go into this today.

It will be hard to conquer your dreams if you cannot conquer your thinking and habits.

I know this makes it seem like I’m saying you shouldn’t care about the amount of time it will take to take before you succeed so just keep doing what you need to do.

But that is not true.

Effectiveness is about utilizing every resource you have properly.

If you have time… then what are you doing with your time daily?

If you have money, then what are you doing with your money daily?

Accountability.

Make no mistake, dreaming or pursuing goals isn’t a process of just working mindlessly. You have to account for your every action and thought. Everything about your daily thoughts and actions is either moving you closer or further from your goal.

We just get so consumed at fantasizing about the end, that we rarely pay critical attention to our everyday thoughts and actions that actually contribute to that end.

I hope we are on the same page.

In short, if you have the time to worry about why you are not at the end of your goal… then how does that time spent contributing to your end goal?

I know, I know… it still sounds as though I’m saying you should just dive into your dream and keep working till something successful shows up.

Yes, but NO!

This is where I’m going to ask you to seriously take the time to go through everything I have just said.

The pursuit is about getting better at the pursuit. That’s all.

Read, research and experiment. If your goal is that much important to you… then you owe it to yourself to continuously try to figure out the best way to accomplish it.

Isn’t that fair to suggest?

This is the ACTUAL work needed to get you to where you want to end up. No one strategy can universally work for every single person on this planet. If it could, then every single person on this planet would succeed from that one strategy.

When you understand and appreciate this… you will lighten the burden of the pursuit considerably.

I hope this helps you in some way. :)

#makeProgressNotExcuses