“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” – Maya Angelou
Humans spend a lot of time wishing we had different lives. We see other people who have achieved some measure of success, however we define it, and we wish we had what they have. We wish for someone else’s career, or their bank account, or whatever it is about them we find so enviable.
It’s obviously true in our world that some people appear to be successful by simply being lucky. It’s also obviously true that not everyone in our world has the same opportunities for success. Those two things being said, most people who are successful in life aren’t successful by accident. They had to change and evolve and give extreme effort to get there.
Sometimes we forget that. We look at someone else’s career or business and wish that was us, but what we really like is the idea of having achieved whatever they’ve achieved. When we start (if we start) digging into the details of how it happened, we find that it took a lot of work and time and energy, and it didn’t just happen overnight.
Your success as a leader, and the success of your business, never just happens. There’s no easy button. The root of all of that success we wish for is simple but difficult: You have to work extremely hard doing the right things, and you have to do them over and over and over again. There’s no way around it.
Think about the vision you have for your career or for the organization that you lead. What actually has to happen for that picture in your head to become a reality? Are you willing to do whatever that is? Are you willing to do it at an extremely high level?
Lots of people talk about their work ethic, but very few people are actually willing to do what it takes to accomplish what they say they want to accomplish. What it really comes down to is that most people want to be wildly successful by doing exactly what they’re doing now. That’s virtually impossible.
Does your vision fit what you’re willing to do to attain it? If not, there are two options. Change the vision to fit your current reality, or change your current reality and go after your vision. The first step is to be honest about your situation and what you’re really willing to do. Good luck.
