Find joy in what you do.
Do it with a spring in your step.
Enjoy Mondays.
Have a laugh.
Don’t just do it for the money.
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You may regret lashing out in anger, but I’ve yet to meet someone who regretted speaking kind words with love.
You may regret going through the motions and doing the bare minimum, but you won’t regret giving it your all and living with enthusiasm.
You may regret putting someone down, but if you speaking words of encouragement, you (and the other person) will be grateful that you did.
We all have moments of failure in our lives.
We can’t win them all and will miss out on promotions, sales, hot dates or game winning jump shots at some stage of our lives.
So, what do we do with such failures?
As I see it, we each have a range of choices.
Your great escape probably won’t be an extravagant tunnel built to help you get out of a maximum security prison.
And I hope that you’re never in a situation where you are in physical danger that requires you to leave so that you feel safe again.
If you’re like most people, your great escape will be something quite different.
It will be when you realise that you don’t have to be a prisoner of your past.
The work that’s done in anonymity.
Behind closed doors when no-one is watching.
The work that’s done that doesn’t get the plaudits.
It’s not ready yet, it’s not fit for public consumption.
The tinkering in the garage.
There’s an old Chinese proverb that says,
“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”
It’s an important reminder that in our microwave world that wants instant results, it’s OK, perhaps even preferable to grow slowly.
So today, I want to encourage you to keep making progress, no matter how slow you seem to be going.
Keep reading every day and learning new things.
These are some of the questions I hear from clients often when we are mapping out a course of action and the fear starts to kick in.
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“What if I don’t get that job that I’m after?”
“What if I get what I want, but don’t like it when I get there?”
“If it doesn’t work, won’t this all be just a waste of time and energy?”
And here are my usual responses:
Awesome, you got that promotion at work.
Brilliant, you made it into the sporting team that you’ve been aspiring towards.
Fantastic, you’ve got the “Open for Business” sign out the front of your new enterprise.
Excellent, you’ve been accepted into that university course that you’ve been dreaming about.
It’s always a great feeling when you feel as though you’ve made it.
Except that you haven’t yet completely made it.
You can tell the world what your goals are.
You can have the most noble of intentions.
You can dream big dreams.
You can have amazing self-belief.
You can think the most positive of thoughts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Life seems hard sometimes.
It can be intimidating to follow your dreams.
