Written By @CoreyLStokes
I recently read Quitter by Jon Acuff. He talks about how we kill out dream jobs by giving up on them too soon. He says we think that it is supposed to happen for us over night. We look at success stories and see end results of that persons years of hard work. And we compare the work we are doing to what we see now. We usually give up when we don’t immediately see the success that others have seen. My wife hears all the time how I wish my dreams would move a little faster. I’ve followed the guidelines set by the pioneers in my field, and I’ve worked diligently on it for hours. I should be successful now! Right? But the truth of the matter is you cannot compare their ending to your beginning. You must give your dream a chance to set roots and grow in its own time.
Mr. Acuff also compares getting where we want to go to the stories of young David (from the bible) and Cinderella. In the story of David. He was chosen but he spent many years as a shepherd before he became king. Where as Cinderella, danced with the prince at the ball and lived happily ever after (unless you’ve seen part 2 and 3). We get caught up in the end results and forget about the journey we need to take to get there.
Dreams don’t happen over night. They take years of preparation, planning and practice to be ready to take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself. Robert Greene says before, you hit mastery, You have to go through roughly 10000 hours of training, preparation, and practice. The journey where you make mistakes, where you prefect your craft without much embarrassment. It is much easier to redefine and reinvent yourself when you only have ten followers as opposed to having ten thousand followers.
Here are a few thing you can do in the mean time:
1.) Do your dream. My dream is to write and speak! Although my wife tells me I should focus on the speaking aspect. I believe I have a message that young men and women of today need to hear. So I do what I can to get that message out spelling errors and all. Like I said I want to write not edit!
2.) Don’t give up your day job. Your day job gives you comfort and security. Yes it takes time away from accomplishing your dream but guess what, your dream is not paying the bills right now. Working a regular 9 – 5 allows you, as Jon Acuff says , the ability to say “No” to the offer that doesn’t suit your needs.
3.) Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes is where we learn. Don’t be afraid to fail. As a kid, My mother would tell us, “Don’t touch the stove it’s hot”. What did we do? We touched it anyway. The mistake of not listening to mom. That resulted in getting burned; and we learned, don’t touch the stove, it’s hot.
4.) Just get started. I sat on my first book for years before I decided to publish it. While I did nothing with it, that is exactly what happened nothing. The writings just sat in my computer file taking up cyberspace. Even if you fail, you’ve done something. you’ve taken a step toward your dream and you’ve probably learned something in the process. If you don’t take that first step however, you learn nothing, you accomplish nothing, you lose nothing and you gain nothing. So just do it!
Corey Stokes 