The Problem is You Haven’t Waited Long Enough
To those tired of waiting.
If you feel like it’s taking too long to reach your dreams, then it’s all the more reason to keep going and never miss a day.
If it’s going to take a long time, you’re only making it longer when you aren’t pursuing it.
You’re only making it longer when you look for shortcuts and alternative methods that are “easy”.
If the time is going to pass anyway, then you might as well spend it pursuing the long, worthwhile path that has more of a guarantee to work than anything else.
The Problem With Growth
The other day I realized that I judged my progress too early.
I realized that I was pivoting too soon and coming to conclusions as to whether or not something worked without giving it the appropriate amount of time.
I had to realize that despite how much I longed to be there, I haven’t done enough here.
I had to realize that I’m impatient; that all things worthwhile take worthwhile time and effort; that growth isn’t linear, but exponential, often feeling stagnant for ages before the breakthrough happens; and that I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The problem is we think we are deserving of our goals from the moment we think them up, and whether or not we realize it, we believe deep down the universe has to run on our time.
There’s conflict there, isn’t it? We know the universe runs on its own time. And yet, we think it owes us something.
Success comes to those who…wait.
Long before you are deserving of it, you have to spend a lot of time proving to yourself it’s possible.
You won’t convince yourself it’s possible until you’ve done it consistently enough over the long run.
You quit too soon.
Just because you aren’t seeing progress on the first day doesn’t mean you aren’t progressing.
Here’s the thing about growth. If you are actively trying to grow and grind and work on your craft daily, you are growing whether or not it feels like it.
As long as you are following a system and practicing deliberately and consistently, you are improving.
The problem with growth is that most of the time it feels stagnant. You can only measure your progress after long periods of time.
I didn’t realize that my writing grew until I went waayyyyy back and read all of my shitty articles, and I’ll probably think the same thing about this article months from now.
Growth often looks and feels like you aren’t going anywhere. That’s how it is.
It’s not linear, it’s exponential. It’s back and forth. Failures and setbacks are a part of growth too as long as you fail forward.
What does that mean?
It means you actually learn from your mistakes. It means you don’t get discouraged by your setbacks and repeat the cycle of making the same mistakes over and over. That’s insanity. If you’re doing that, then you’re not in a growing-stagnant stage, you’re regressing.
You’re doing it all wrong.
If you want to measure progress, measure it by how many days you miss; Measure it by how many days you put in.
You don’t have time to waste time complaining about how much time it’s taking and how much time you don’t have.
People aren’t lying, you literally have to trust the process.
I know it sounds cliche, but you have to trust the process because the process is all you will have for an extremely long time.
Look, I’m no idiot. I know none of this is guaranteed, but following the path that many have used to be successful works more than anything else. Why not pursue it?
Shortcuts may bring you there, but you won’t stay there. You’re not just looking to accomplish that one dream of yours. When you reach it, you’ll have more. When you become successful, whatever that means to you, you’ll want to stay there.
The only way you accomplish your dreams and not fall off is to follow the long and consistent path that leads to the most fruitful and everlasting results.
Make it your ambition to become a consistent person. Make it your ambition to become a quantity machine, churning out practice sessions daily. Know that the more consistent time you put in, the more it compounds and makes your growth exponential.
Don’t focus too much on quality. Of course, always try to put out your best work, but when your focus on quality is too high, it’s called being a “perfectionist”.
An actual perfectionist never gets anything done because nothing is ever perfect. An actual perfectionist often never even starts. An actual perfectionist ends up on the deathbed full of regret.
Remember, your only goal is to be better than yesterday but not as good as tomorrow.
You Haven’t Waited Long Enough
If you’ve been doing it daily for a year, it’s most likely not enough. After two years you might actually see some growth, and maybe you’ve seen little successes and have gotten a few opportunities along the way.
Maybe you’ve built up some momentum, and once you’ve done so it’s imperative you never let it go. Ride that wave all the way to the shore. Letting go of the momentum is the biggest mistake I made writing on Medium to date.
Just because it’s been a long time doesn’t mean it’s been enough time. You have to justify your right to your dreams by doing enough here.
Now, there’s a chance you could be following the wrong path. There’s a chance that you could have followed the wrong path for ages even. There’s a chance you could be heading in the wrong direction and not seeing the results you should be seeing after a given amount of time.
You can’t try to grow alone. Of course, the path to our dreams is a lonely one, but we must have help along the way.
You should be receiving feedback and advice from those in the place you would like to be in. You should be studying the craft and seeing the correlations. You should be recognizing the patterns and pivoting when it makes sense, not when you’re tired of following the path.
I’m all about working hard, but you should be working smart as well. You should be building up a portfolio of consistent work, you should be learning from your mistakes, and you should be receiving feedback and implementing and engraining the information in your work.
I’ve run into far too many problems in my journey as a musician by ignoring the advice of many phenomenal teachers. Had I just implemented what they said in lessons about my sound and what to practice and how to win an audition, I could’ve been much further ahead by now.
I ignored the advice not because I thought they didn’t know what they were talking about, but because I was lazy and didn’t want to follow the long path.
Anything worth pursuing takes worthwhile effort. That “while” part is important.
On a quick note: I’m seeing a wave of people who think it’s cool to hate on self-help.
The problem is people tend to always look at self-help advice with rolled eyes every time someone says something uplifting. How would you rather think?
You can go and be miserable and complain about the “realities” of the world while I sit over here and act despite them.
It’s possible to have faith in yourself while facing harsh realities of the world, you know. However, see things for as they are but never worse than they are. Sure, you may never achieve your dreams, but many have proved that achieving your dreams are possible. Where are you going to place your focus? Know that this “realistic” advice people try to preach to you about the “problems with self-help” is mainly crap. Their approach tries to remind you that “it most likely won’t work”, but that’s not fact. It’s not truth, no matter how bluntly and stately they spin it. It’s true for many boring humans, but YOU aren’t boring. YOU are putting in the work and chasing worthwhile dreams. Most boring and normal people dream and die on the deathbed with those dreams without having done anything to work toward them. Most normal people are comfortable in their own mistey. If you are putting in the work daily, you aren’t boring. You’re exceptional.