Success and accomplishment, in any field, is always a journey. It is always a progressive trip along a path that leads in the direction of your ultimate ambition. It is never a straight line and it requires discipline, persistence and hard work.
The discipline, persistence and hard work are not negotiable. If they aren’t part of your plan, you have no chance. The game changer, which is totally dependent on you, is the progression. It is up to you to recognize the value of each day’s experience and learn from it. More importantly, it is up to you to apply the lessons you learn the next day to get better. That’s how you learn to do more, do it better, do it faster and take on greater responsibility. That’s how you progress from nothing to everything.
That’s the difference between having 20 years’ experience with all the skill, knowledge and wisdom that goes with it versus having one years’ experience 20 times.
Take the analogy of building a wall. You don’t tell yourself “I’m going to build a wall. In fact, I’m going to build the biggest, most magnificent wall of all time.” You especially don’t tell yourself that if you’ve never built a wall before. Facing that kind of pressure, more than 99% of would never do anything.
The way to build that wall is to tell yourself “today I am going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. There is not going to one other brick on this planet that is laid as well as this brick.” Then you lay the brick. The next day you come back and you lay another perfect brick. Now the discipline comes into play because you keep coming back and you keep laying perfect bricks, repeating the process without fail for as long as it takes.
An interesting thing will start to happen along this journey. Your discipline will begin to bring the benefits of persistence, and remember, persistence and repetition are the mother of skill. Soon, if your paying attention and applying your lessons, you’ll notice that your skill is improving. You’ll be able to lay two perfect bricks and then three perfect bricks in the time it used take to lay one.
As you continue to discipline yourself, you’re understanding of the skills involved will become so familiar to you can that you teach them to others. As you share your growing knowledge of your craft, you’ll be able to create a team and construction of your wall will accelerate.
You’ll become a manager of brick layers, then a wall building contractor and before long you will have built “the biggest, most magnificent wall of all time,” and guess where you’ll be.
Right on top! On top of your wall, on top of your career, on top of your industry, on top of the world!!!!!
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