The 1 Thing You Have to Give up to Become Successful
To become successful, you need to be able to keep to this habit 99% of the process:
Work while everyone else works.
Work while everyone else plays.
No matter how much determined and insightful you may be. Or how big of an idea you have crafted through a planning-framework that lasted for months on end.
Hard-work is what always makes the common denominator for every valid, measured, and well-thought step you take toward your endpoint. You have to keep grinding day in and day out, clock in and clock out, and even after.
And after such a neck and neck with your own schedules, if you stay consistent with your work, you will be able to direct the flow of your process more than any idea or style that you bring to the table.
To become successful, you have to work really, really hard.
There are no shortcuts. No timesavers. Nothing is going to move the needle unless you move yourself first. If you wish to become successful (in whichever field), hard-work is going to be the singlemost effective ploy to get you there.
Everything else is acquirable.
A unique style is acquired through consistent practice. Better ideas begin to find you if you put yourself out in the open to be found by constantly showing up. You will find your substance with all this, probably when you are knee-deep with work, in the meat of your process.
But here’s a typical rundown of what people have in mind when they first set out:
- Work hard (with The Big Picture in mind).
- Expect solid results.
(Time passes)
- Why am I not seeing the fruits of my labor? (Big Picture getting bigger.)
- Okay, work hard.
- Expect solid results.
(Time passes)
- Why am I not seeing the fruits of my labor? (Big Picture probably looks absurd by now.)
- Maybe I don’t have resources enough. Or maybe I don’t have connections. Maybe I am not cut out for this shit.
This is what keeps almost more than half the triers from ever succeeding.
They begin their work having more than a tangible sense of their end rewards. Every time they overexert themselves beyond their comfort zones, they believe all that effort is going through some bureau de change where they can exchange their efforts for whatever zealous ambitions they want attained in life. To them, success is always around the next bend, in an alleyway, or a few miles into the weeds, while they may still have cities to cross.
This is the most dangerous kind of comfort you can have for your hard work— that they are sure to pay off.
Because more often than not, they don’t. At least, not so soon.
When you begin your work to sculpt a career out of whatever it is you are proficient at, you are not worried the slightest about the herculean steps you have to climb to see your hard work finally pay off. You are wholly devoted to the end-reward. The journey itself does not entice you, as much as you becoming <_____> someday.
As a result, you find yourself cannon-balling into the pool you don’t have. Your mind keeps going back to the cars you cannot afford, the penthouse, the crisp suit, the reputation, the drinks with other people as successful as you (or more), and all that come with being at the other end of your “rainbow”.
And you believe it completely. You believe it because you know you are on the positive side of your growth-chart, and the line that represents your graph is as steep as anything you have ever seen.
Here comes the realization part.
There are no results.
No solid proof for the work you have done. No one to acknowledge the effort you have put in. When you begin to understand the Ferrari and the Penthouse are nowhere in sight — not even anything as much as a brick to show for your work — you not only question yourself, but jump to quick, submissive conclusions.
Each moment you spend in your average studio apartment, and not in the penthouse, you feel like you are destined to stay this way forever.
Everyday that you have to take the bus, and not the Ferrari, you think you are never going to be as luxurious to buy one.
And every month that you get your pay working on a job that you don’t like one bit, and not living your passions and dreams, you somehow understand that a cubicle’s is the last four walls you will ever see for the rest of your life.
But here’s the truth:
All that time you thought you worked hard on your goals, you didn’t even scratch the surface. Because you worked hard, but not long enough. And you visualized the results you believed you would see about ten yards down the line.
The greatest challenge you will find on your path to success is to keep working on and on even if you can’t see tangible results.
You are going to work a full year on your goals, and still not feel like becoming marginally successful.
But the truth is that the very second you give up on your dreams, millions other give up too. And they worked just as hard. But in the long run, what matters the most is how “long” you can work with the same devotion that you started with.
It’s your expectations of success that keep you from attaining it. When you measure your progress against the visions you have of success, there is no way success can’t seem like a world away. And all the hard work that you put in that doesn’t seem to have paid off is because you thought they didn’t measure up to producing solid results.
Not that they wouldn’t have.
And so, give up on your “expectations” of how soon you are going to see the results of your hard work. Give up on fantasizing “The Big Picture”.
Keep working hard, and consistently, and you will see the results of your work.
