The most important type of change in your life is incremental change.
Sometimes life requires big leaps.
Other times, it requires lots of small steps.
Wake up in a flurry, have a dream, want something. Expend all your energy that day, that week, in starting your new goal. (Say your goal is running, so you run 4 times that week). Your energy fades, your enthusiasm peters out, and the next week you’re back in the same place, same habits. Not running.
Worse yet, dream the dream – and do nothing. Decide preemptively that the dream is too difficult and therefore must never be attempted.
You’re still in the same place, where you are now.
Unfortunately, our dreams are often heavily focused on the final outcome.
Crossing the finish line at the marathon race, being a best-selling author, being a director at a major company, mastering a language, being fluent in a skill – these are all final outcomes.
We have a vivid picture of what the product or outcome looks like, but not the process.
But what’s much, much more important than the final outcome is the process of getting there. Not the outcome. The outcome is one small measure that showcases the process you went through to get there.
To get there, you have to want the process. You have to be okay with The Middle. With the dip, the part where you stick to it or you give up. The early mornings or the late nights. The hum-drums of the routine that isn’t so exciting, because it’s about the process. It’s about dedication.
To learn how to hold a side-arm crow pose in yoga, you can’t force it to happen in one day (I can’t, at least). I get up almost every day and practice in the living room. The practice and exploration mean more to me than the day I “finish” the pose.
Can you even finish a yoga pose? There’s no such thing.
Because the next day, I’ll be doing it again. And again. And exploring, slowly, my body as it reaches, bends and unfolds in front of me.
To write a book, what does that look like? What is the process? Where will you write? How often will you write? What will it take to get it done?
For each of your dreams, what does the finish line look like?
More importantly, what does the process look like? Learn what the process will be.
Is that what you want?