Your homework assignment last week was to have a hard conversation and check in with yourself. The goal was to identify what you are doing that just isn’t working to help move you forward toward your dream. My ask of you- begin to Go Big. Be bold. I told you that I have a NY Times Best Seller in me. What did you dare to dream for your old life? How bold was it?  Could you imagine how life altering it would be for that dream to take place? Would you be somewhere that is just amazing and put yourself operating a whole new level? I hope the answer is yes. I actually can imagine myself on a NY Times Best Sellers book tour talking to people about where this idea came from and even more so about how they need to chase their own dreams.

This Week’s Talk

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase– Martin Luther King.  While researching this week’s posting, I found a blog that talked about trusting that the rest of the staircase is there, and that you will be able to get to your destination.  I am not saying that this isn’t faith or trust… but wondering if maybe that is more execution, persistence, or determination. 

I remember my ex-wife told me I was wasting my time when I was working on my Masters Degree. She said based on the course load, my workload, and my international travel demands, it would take me 6-7 years to complete the program. She was quick to point out that if I missed more than a couple semesters or had to drop a couple classes for any reason that I could never finish the program because there was a 7 year limit and it would have all been in vain.  My response was that regardless, in 7 years I will be 7 years older and graduate or not I would still be ahead.  She felt it was a waste because in the end, I most likely won’t graduate and all the effort would be for naught. I did graduate. It was an amazing 6 years and one semester, and I look back at it as perhaps the best thing I did with my life; personally and professionally.

This Week’s Assignment

This week, we will follow where the stair metaphor leads us. Most of the time people use this expression and talk about walking down some dark stairs. I ask you to think about walking UP dark stairs since that is even more work. You are exerting effort, in the dark, not knowing exactly what the payoff is.  Walking up or down stairs knowing, or at least having a preponderance of evidence as to where it will lead, for me, is execution, effort, persistence as noted earlier. Let’s think about this differently this week. What if you have no idea where this effort will lead or if it will pay off at all.  This blog, has almost no followers, I get very few questions/emails from it, and so far, it has NOT helped me get the following I need to get the book that this blog is supposed to help drive followers to, published. If you look at the dates of postings, even I lost faith for a while and didn’t post. Some of that was faith, and some was I had hand surgery and typing was very painful and unproductive.

I don’t know where the hour or two it takes me every week to get a posting done will take me or what if anything I will gain. I do know, if I don’t do anything, I won’t go anywhere relative to this project. I can ask myself, is there a better use of my time that could be more productive in moving this book project forward than this? Can’t say but this week… that will be my question for me, and for you.  Pick something you are working on and ask yourself if there is a better use of that time relative to what that time is supposed to do for you. I am NOT advocating giving up on the dream. I am just saying there are many roads that can get you home. Is there a better route to where your dreams lie?

See you next week…