The Middle of Anything Feels Like Failure #80
Beginning is exciting. When everything is fresh and new, you see and hear things in technicolor. It’s exciting and can be scary, but when it’s new, you tend to interpret the events as excitement, not fear – though physiologically it’s the same. See blog #9, Choosing Your Ride.
When you reach a goal, complete a project, check something enduring off the list, it is gratifying, validating and exhilarating.
It’s the middle that’s the tricky part. When you’re building something, forging new paths, working through the details and making it happen with no sight of the beginning or end, it can be daunting, fatiguing, discouraging and trying. It can seem like it’s never going to happen, that just as you’re getting there, just as things are in a groove, just as things begin to click along, you hit another challenge.
The middle of anything feels like failure. It tests your commitment and requires discipline and persistence to stick to it when it’s uncomfortable. You will be challenged indeed, but staying the course, persistence and blind trust are required to push through.
This is the difference between the leaders and everyone else. Everyone has ideas and can start. It’s easier then. To push past your comfort zone, time and again, when you’re entertaining the idea of quitting; this is what leaders do.
It’s not enough to begin and trying won’t get you there. The rewards are on the other side of giving up. Oh, and you’ll accomplish some things as well.