It’s Make it a Great Monday, and I can’t stop thinking about something I saw in Tim Ferris’s 5-Bullet Friday email update. It made me think of how I launched my website to hold my writing projects. The website was a one-man labour of love, inched forward one step at a time over the past 18 months, primarily working on it on the weekends and over early morning coffees, until, presto, ‘What is every gPage Singeltary thing?’ came to life.
The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.
It comes in the form of an email Tim received from former US National Team gymnastics coach, Christopher Sommers.
Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is integral to the path towards excellence.
It is essential and something every elite athlete has had to learn to deal with.
If the pursuit of excellence were easy, everyone would do it.
[Paraphrasing below.]
- This impatience in dealing with frustration is why most people fail to achieve their goals—unreasonable expectations time-wise result in unnecessary frustration due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process.
- The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home – a blue-collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. Accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. Don’t beat yourself up over small bumps in the road; learn to enjoy and appreciate the process.
- You will spend far more time on the journey than with those all-too-brief moments of triumph at the end. Indeed, celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. If you are not encountering defeat reasonably regularly, you are not trying hard enough. And refuse to accept less than your best.
- Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision must be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. It is much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step. This provides far too many opportunities to drift from your chosen goal inadvertently. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
Wow! That is great stuff!
[Today’s featured image above: cycling on the beautiful Isle of Wight in the English Channel. We took a quick weekend boondoggle recently to meet with Woman Power Wednesday (WPW): Shereen Hoban. More images from that trip below.]
