Unsexy Success
People love sexy outcomes. Big numbers, best-seller lists, fancy new cars, a fit beach body, a success story, Forbes richest man or woman. To name a few, but you know what wasn’t sexy? The road and path to get to these high points. It is usually a slow climb to the hypothetical top or to fame. And our society today says work, grind, follow. Work. Grind. Follow.
We show up day after day and forget that it will take different actions to advance, and it sure as shit won’t come to fruition with a full-court press to fulfilling someone else’s dreams.
A successful climb looks more like Fall. Continue. Differentiate.
Let’s talk about three unsexy top offenders that we simply must accept to get one step closer to memorable success.
Repetition Rundown
Repetition is typically what kills us all a little. A small piece of our soul leaves our body as we perform the same task for the umpteenth time. The sameness of our day-in and day-out becomes boring. Yet is insanely necessary to have a systematic approach and habits that move the needle. This is why we have to practice our craft & repeat the actions multiple times to create muscle memory and make things feel like second nature to our rebelling selves.
Reminders & tips for when you get sick of the repetition and feel rundown:
1. Realizing that exponential growth is key. Gradual growth over time compounds massively in the long run.
2. Try and find new ways to do the same task, or if you’re in the workplace and super brave, ask for a bigger responsibility to shake things up.
3. Remember that all the greatest inventions, businesses, and ideas came from multiple attempts at doing the same thing with a new variable.
We can’t always control the setting or exact work we perform, but we can look at it with fresh eyes and tie it back to our original love or passion for it.
Minimal Motivation
Motivation can be fleeting. One day we can wake up ready to slay a giant with a stone and a sling. While other days you’d rather take that stupid stone and chuck it at the closest object. We are human, so it happens.
Here are some key things to remember when it comes to motivation:
1. Keep creating that dang momentum because without it motivation is fleeting. Hint: This is where that repetition that breeds long-term results kicks in. The micro-progress will render momentum and, in turn, keep you going.
2. Do it even though it sucks and you don’t feel like it. This will require some tough love on yourself to keep showing the heck up.
3. Find a tribe of awesome people that inspire you. If that’s not at home, seek it out in community groups, online groups, and anywhere you can.
Confession: I’m going to a network group of freaking exceptional women today & I kinda don’t feel like the whole social aspect happening, but I’m going anyways. I’ll let you know how it pans out.
Adulting Ass Kicking
Work. Grind. Follow. Kicks in again.
We are conditioned little beasts that, like the responsible adults we are, show up and get it done regardless of how we feel because we have a lifestyle to maintain, a family to take care of, and taxes to pay. Oh, the taxes.
Being an adult can, plain and simple, just suck some days.
We do responsible and hard things because they are necessary. This doesn’t mean that we let these responsibilities define us. Work. Grind. Follow.
It means we either accept our current state or develop a way to shift gears. We can go from Work. Grind. Follow. to Fall. Continue. Differentiate. And continue no matter what comes.
I want you to realize that no exceptionally great and successful person ever got to that place without a crap load of struggles, and it sure as crap wasn’t magazine covers and glamour the entire ride. It was fall, continue, and differentiate yourself on REPEAT.
Let’s continue to unravel together, my friends. I’ll leave you with this:
“I want you to know in your bones that your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time.”
― Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
