There’s an old saying that says that “it’s progress that matters… not perfection.” It’s a great concept. We can get so wrapped up in being perfect… in being completely competent… that we don’t reach out to take the risks that are necessary to achieve great things in life.
To be sure, the only way to get really good at something… at anything… is to be willing to be 100%, absolutely and completely lousy at it for awhile. We start slow… and we improve with experience.
So it was that a friend and I were speaking over the weekend about plans he has to become self-employed this calendar year. Well, that’s not really true… he doesn’t have plans… yet.
What he has is a dream… a vision… to be self-employed this year. But that’s as far as it’s gone… just a dream… just a vision… and maybe more of an hallucination at this point.
Now, before I go further… understand that I cleared this with him… so I’m not speaking out of school, if you know what I mean. And besides, I’m not giving you his name… so enough with the disclaimers.
Here’s the point… he set this goal for himself the last week of December… back when there were 370 days to pull it off. He’s now at 241… and counting. Can he do it in that time? I don’t know… and neither does he. He hasn’t started yet.
But tweak just one thing… do just one thing… consistently… and it will eventually get done.
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You see… here was a goal that was never broken down. It was always viewed as this incredibly big thing… an enormous task which there never seemed to be time for. But that’s the funny thing about time: we HAVE time for… whatever we MAKE time for. We all have 168 hours each week… how we spend them is up to us.
And things get done by… well… by people doing them. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s really it. While there are many factors that come into play in achieving anything worthwhile… there is always two common denominators… things are being worked on… AND… they are moving forward.
Remember, progress… not perfection.
I may not be able to do everything I would like to do this week… but I MUST do… what I CAN do. And as we do what we can do… we improve… we get more efficient… we attract others to our mission… and we nail our goals.
There is only one way to live our dreams in the future… and that is to begin living them… today.
I look forward to speaking with you.
Questions:
What one thing did you do today… to move your dream forward? What are you going to do tomorrow?
Are your plans written down? What happens if you reach this weeks goal? What if you miss? Who are you accountable to?
Are you attracting others to your vision? Why, or why not?
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