Recently, I heard the best time to start anything was five years ago and, the second-best time to start is now. It’s not a perfect statement but, it does hold truth within it. Yes, it would have been great to start doing what you desire to do in life five years ago. Five years ago didn’t happen for whatever reason(s). You didn’t start yesterday either. That would leave now as the best time to begin. That is the purest piece of advice you can give yourself. Tell yourself to do it now. We find ourselves wanting, dreaming, desiring so much we forget to begin the journey towards it. It’s time to sow seeds. It’s a start. We live with the result in our heads and neglect the beginning. Backward thinking can cause us many problems. We’ll experience the immediate gratification of success. Our brain does that, assisting our inaction because we get all the “feels” just imagining. We no longer possess the patience to plant, water and wait. Life is not a “microwave” but, we live as if it is. This thought process is okay unless you desire something that requires catching, cleaning, prepping, and baking. You’ve eliminated that from your menu with the microwave approach to life.
Sowing seeds requires us to get out of the microwave outlook on life. It is difficult because we have access to everything. It’s not as helpful as we think it is. It makes us shun away great things that take time. Do we want to build new relationships? No, we keep the same people around us even if they aren’t the best people for us. Do we want to enter a new industry? We’ve already seen success in this other industry and, although we don’t love what we do, we can’t see ourselves starting over. Do we want to build a business from scratch? That is the goal, but it may be better to work for an established company learn there and then start our company. Yes, that sounds great, but we never leave. We never start our own. We learn how that company runs which is not how we would run ours. We have an issue here. We are holding seeds in our hands, looking at the soil beneath our feet, and promptly placing the seeds in our pockets.
The next time we feel ourselves about to place our seeds in our pocket we need to drop the seeds and cover them. The seeds don’t need perfect placement, perfect conditions, or 24/7 sunlight. They need a chance. They need the ability to grow. We have that power. It will be tough to know you dropped those seeds but see nothing coming out of the ground. Those of us who have done this know the feeling. It’s scary. It can be demoralizing. We may beat ourselves up about the lack of progress we see. We must understand that growth, in the beginning, doesn’t see a ray of light. We must keep pushing. We will not know when our effort will show, but we must believe it will and work while seeing nothing. Keeping this mindset is the hardest thing we will do. Of course, it will be worth it. We know this because we’ve already felt it. The difference between imagining and living a dream is the feeling is permanent. The nights of waking up and being hit with “you still have mountains to move” will change to great nights of sleep. You’ll wake up in the morning proud to be you. We’ve imagined long enough. Let’s imagine one last time. Imagine waking up where you want to be in life. Write down what you are doing, what your lifestyle is, what your bank account looks like, and what were your greatest challenges along the way? No more imagining. Look at that list and work. The list will still provide a boost when needed, but the words will limit us from going too far off into wonderland. Most importantly, we’ll be reminded that we will have challenges along the way. This fact equips us with useful information that will help keep our foot on the gas pedal.
In closing, sowing seeds is a slow approach to success. It’s a winners game. Things that come slow usually go slow or stay. Things that come quickly can go just as fast or faster. A loser’s game is looking for a shortcut. An example would be showing yourself a mountain top and attempting to create a tram or Skyride to the top instead of taking your first steps up the mountain. You waste time at the bottom attempting to rush to the top. Soon you may realize you could have been at the top if you would have simply taken steps up the mountain. Takes those steps before you convince yourself you are too close to perfecting the plan for the tram to bother walking up. We’ve done that long enough.
Food for thought…You do the dishes!
