Actually, I’m an overnight success, but it took twenty years. ~Monty Hall
- When you see people who are successful it only looks like it happened overnight.
- You’re not seeing their failures and their false starts.
- You weren’t with them when no one believed in them or in what they were doing.
- You weren’t with them when they had to look in the eyes of family and friends who didn’t understand exactly what they were doing.
- You weren’t with them when people asked: ‘Hey, what are you up to these days?” and they knew that they really couldn’t talk about their stuff to certain people, because they wouldn’t get it or if they got it they would try to kill the idea with questions, doubts, and just how many ways this thing they were doing was “different”.
You Have To Be “Different” To Be a Success
Success only comes when you are true to yourself, in spite of who you are and in what others say. It only comes when you ARE different. When you are who you are – and are okay that “you’re different”. When what you are doing is radical. When it’s new. When it hasn’t been done before. When it hasn’t been done how you’re thinking about doing it. It’s unique. It’s you.
Success only comes when you believe strongly in what you are doing. It only comes when you keep going regardless of what others may or may not think of what you’re doing. It only comes when you’re okay with allowing things to play out.
Living A Everyday Mundane Life Just Doesn’t Cut It
There are 7.5 billion people in the world and many just live “everyday normal” lives that amount to not much but the daily routine of living. Growing up, going to school, working, marrying, having children,eating, eating out, going to movies, sleeping, going on vacation, retiring, playing sports, lounging around, entertaining themselves, enjoying holidays, and then-they-die. They never really find their own path. They never look for their own path. Even those who find or think they might have found their path get caught up in living the mundane everyday life. They have a flash of inspiration. They figure out what they’re good at. They lose all sense of time when they engage in this activity or creative expression. Then they don’t pursue it. They miss their own deadlines. They keep delaying the process of discovery and walking their path. They can’t let go of what is…the everyday normal stuff…to do what could be. They don’t give things a try because they are afraid of failure, afraid of looking stupid, afraid of things not working out – just afraid of being “different”, doing something “different” from what is “normal”….and they look up and they’re still living just a mundane life.
Successful People Had The Same Doubts
Success comes to those who try and fail, maybe a hundred times. But once you are a success people can never really see those failures, they only see what is in front of them – the successful person that – they watch on television, read their books, watch their movies, watch them play sports, see them at their businesses, see a piece of beauty in their artwork or walk into their corporate headquarters.
One day those successful people were afraid. One day they were discouraged. One day they didn’t think whatever they were working on was going to work out either. One day they were alone developing whatever it was that brought them success, when others were seemingly having a good time (but in all actuality those other people were just living mundane lives…waking up, going to work, going on vacation…ect…).
One day those successful people were telling themselves that it wasn’t going to work. It could be better. It could be branded differently. Who did they think they were to keep on trying, BUT they overcame those days, and those thoughts, and just kept pushing on. They didn’t spend time living a mundane life. They didn’t spend time entertaining themselves, or working for someone else, or working to keep up the pretenses that they had a good life – a good marriage, a good family, a good job, ect – all the while knowing that they were really dead inside.
One day they just let all of those things go and pushed forward doing what they felt they needed to do, even if they failed, AGAIN.
Success only looks like it happened overnight, but it happened over MANY long nights, MANY sleepless nights, MANY lonely nights of knowing that no one really understood or cared about what they were doing or studying.
Finding the Right Track for the Remainder of Your Journey
Just know that we are all on a journey.
It is an individual journey.
You have to find and take the journey for yourself.
When you get on the right track that’s for you then your journey starts to take off like a train you’ve been waiting for. You know it because when you get on that track you don’t look back. You know all those other tracks have led you to this one. You know you are still on a journey.
You know the way forward is unknown, but it seems almost familiar. The scenery is something that you’ve envisioned or experienced or thought out at some point in a waking state or a dreaming state or another place and time. It just seems like: “Oh, this is familiar, I found it, I’ve been looking for this track and I finally found it.”
Then things start to just keep moving along and you look up and you’re successful.
Even before it actually manifests in your physical environment, you know you’re going to be successful if you stay on this track.
The Struggle Mind-Set Is Gone
People think it’s overnight and no matter how many times you try to tell your story (or embellish it) they don’t seem to hear it or believe the struggle that you went through because things are now effortlessly coming to you.
It’s’ even hard for you to believe your struggle story (did that really happen to me?, was that my childhood?, did I work there?, did I lose money on that idea?) because your mind has progressed to a place of such peace and alignment that you can’t believe you were so off track.
But you needed to be off track in order to know what being on the right track felt like.
You know that you needed to let go of things, people, ideas, concepts, places, and belief systems – that kept you stuck in the place that you knew you needed to leave.
It was not easy.
It was difficult.
Those decisions were hard.
You had to make them in order to let go of the struggle-type life and mindset. You knew it was not the right track for you, because you were honest with yourself. You just have kept letting go (once you recognized that you needed to). Now you can see, or are in the future moment that you’ve only dreamed of. It even seems like it happened overnight to you…but you know that your success was not overnight…it just seems that way.