There is not much that feels better than progress. You finally break through something that has been a barrier and immense feelings of joy and relief set in. You feel accomplished. Past feelings of doubt and frustration leave the premises or at least take a back seat. This progress is what gives us the confidence to keep going. It lets us know that what we are doing is possible. Everyone experiences this progress at some point in their life. So, why is it that only a few of us get to the finish line of attaining our dream? It’s because that step forward is usually followed by 2 steps backward.

The dreaded backward steps. It beats us up. It takes away our joy and relief while bringing doubt and frustration with it. The first step backward is usually one that is either out of our control or caused by a lack of knowledge on our part. The doubt is caused by the quick math in your head that says you can’t get anywhere by taking one step backward every time you take a step forward. In this scenario, doubt isn’t coming from a negative place. It is coming from an educated analysis of your situation. That doesn’t help. You can’t say stop being negative. It’s hard to tell yourself to stop doing something you aren’t doing. You are not being negative, not being pessimistic, and not looking for excuses. So, now you need to deal with this legitimate doubt which leads to the second step backward. Of course, it does. How many times have we found ourselves in the midst of a problem only to make it a little worse with our bright idea of how to fix it? It may be too many to remember. Let’s say you had a goal/dream to buy a house. You buy the house. The house is great. You finally did it and you didn’t think you were ready. A week later a faucet starts dripping. You, being a new homeowner, pridefully take it upon yourself to take the faucet off to fix it. The problem is you know nothing about faucets or any aspect of plumbing. Water is everywhere. After 15 minutes of showering your bathroom, and using all your clothes and linens to soak up the water you go to the internet and discover you can shut the water off. You do it. The water is finally off. The faucet is in pieces. Water damage is enough to put a hole in the floor. You know this because you have a hole in the floor. This may be a little exaggerated for most and just right for others, but this is what breeds doubt. The aftermath is what brings in the other friend of the backward step, frustration.

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Frustration follows doubt like a perfectly timed hook after doubt jabs you in the face. Frustration is strong because it also is the result of educated analysis. You think of everything that needs to be done just to get back to where you were. You follow those thoughts up with the fact that you would not have to do any of those things if you didn’t attempt to fix the issue yourself. This only births more frustration. Look, I’m with you. This sucks but it is part of the journey. Yes, you did try to do what you believed to be the right thing. No, it was not the right thing. Yes, you must fix it. No, you don’t have to smile through it but yes, it will help. Let out a scream, a couple good old 4 letter words. This is part of the game. No, I don’t know why it is. Yes, I feel the world would be just fine if things like this didn’t happen but here we are and there they are…happening.

In closing, we need to calm our educated analyzing selves down. If we can justify doubt and frustration, then we can justify finding a reason to smile through it. We know doubt and frustration disappear with progress so let’s remind ourselves of that as often as we need it. The person in the last paragraph still has a house. It just includes a couple of damaged rooms. There is a point in time where that person would have taken a house that needed more work than that. 1 Step Forward 2 Steps Back. No one said the steps were the same length. Don’t let those 2 steps back take away from your giant stride forward.

Food for thought…You do the dishes.
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