"Sometimes it takes years for a person to become an overnight success." - Prince
I Woke Up Like This
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. Perhaps because I'm starting to feel like I'm attaining some level of it. But like most people, even saying that makes me nervous, like I'm going to jinx it and it will now suddenly go away (poof!). As if all the hard work to get somewhere can be undone by appreciating the fruits of that hard work. What the Hell is wrong with us?
It Was Nothing
I know I'm not alone in this insane belief and if you've listened to enough celebrities talk, so many of them feel like their lives and fortunes will just go away one day. Total scarcity mindset. Even the most successful of them feel like at any day they'll be back to waiting tables. It makes no sense. They'll claim that's what drives them to work harder, but at what point can you simply appreciate what you have and trust that all the work you put in has set you up for lasting success?
Out of the Blue
My coach recently published a blog post about this concept of people getting calls from clients "out of the blue." But as anyone who's seen this inspirational iceberg poster knows, what you don't see lies beneath the surface. There's no truly out of the blue successes, except for a small few.
But when you build the right audience, hone your message for that audience, tend to your craft and community, and put the right processes into place, things happen. It's by design, not by accident.
Acknowledge the Work
Maybe it's because we're taught not to boast or brag about ourselves. But why do the work if you don't want it to pay off? There's no shame in hard work in any culture. In fact, it's lauded. So, why are we so quick to not connect the dots between that behind-the-scenes work and the result of more revenue, clients, and business it produces? Again, that's by design. If you set up the system to pay off, the goal is for it To. Pay. Off. Otherwise, why bother? This, as some of you might have seen, was my 2020. I worked harder than I ever have in my life. So why should what's happening now not be a direct result of that?
Careful What You Wish For
It's fascinating to me that the very thing we wish for — once we get it — we find a way to downplay it, not believe it's real, not realize we got it because we deserve it and not appreciate it. Now, I'm not saying that good things don't get taken away and hard work always begets success, but when it does, we need to pat ourselves on the back (or give ourselves a high five) for a job well done and acknowledge that this did happen for a reason. And we are that reason. Want to be your own reason? You know you want to...
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