I was inspired to write this after reading another Active Rain blog. Everyone has barriers, obstacles, pitfalls in their life from time to time. What separates successful people is what they do when faced with said obstacles. I have to admit that I haven't always handled it the right way.
Whenever someone embarks on a new endeavor whether it's a fitness goal, business venture, or anything else, they have expectations. They think they'll lose 10lbs in a month or will close their first deal in 60 days, etc. It's good to have an expectation of success in a prescribed time frame, I mean goals are paramount to success. I'm also a firm believer that you should set lofty goals as it is better to aim high and miss than aim low and hit. But you must be careful in doing so because if you can't stand small failures you'll never achieve big success. For some success takes longer than they'd hope and for others results fizzle out after some initial success. Either way, the issue for most people becomes what they do when those expectations aren't met. Are you going to re-evaluate what you're doing and make changes to improve your chances of meeting the goal or are you going to take your ball and go home?
I'll use myself as an example in both scenarios:
1. After some initial success I hit a plateau
For most of my life as a teenager and young adult I kept myself in very good physical condition. As I neared my 30s and with added adult responsibilities I let myself slip in that category some. I didn't do a good job balancing my responsibility to my family and my responsibility to my own health. In 2012 through a friend I joined a 90 day challenge. My initial goal was to lose 15 of the 30 total pounds I wanted to shed in 90 days. Well I lost 15 in the first 30 days, so I adjusted my goal to lose the full 30 over the remainder of the 90 day challenge. I missed by 1 pound. At the end of the challenge I suffered a knee injury and was unable to exercise at the level I had been. I gave up on the program and put all of my weight back on.
2. I did not meet my expectations in the time frame I expected
When I made the jump from the operations side of mortgage lending to sales last year I had an expectation that I would have been doing $1 million per month by now. I've yet to hit $1 million in any month, been close but no cigar. I set a lofty goal and haven't quite reached it. In fact it took me 6 months just to reach the income level I left behind when I ditched the benefits of a steady paycheck for the higher ceiling of full commission. Believe me this makes me nervous and the temptation is there to just say, "screw it" and go back to a regular job. The thing is I've been working really hard on building relationships over the past year and some of those relationships are just now beginning to bear fruit. I don't want to be the guy on the bottom of the cartoon. I've been that guy before....not this time :)
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