Be prepared with a process, not a solution.
The Why: It makes the incoherent more coherent. Without a process, confusion sets in.
Process transforms any challenge into a series of small steps. Taken one by one, process will enable us to reach any goal. Process requires time and teaches patience. Process rests on a solid foundation of experience and embodies trusting in our unfolding potential. If you have a good process, clients will be happy to pay you for it.
In any process, skipping a vital step can mean the difference between success and failure. Checklists may be old school, but they work.
Process paves the path between you and your goals.
There is a process to lose weight, clean a house, or play the ukulele.
The question to ask is what's the desired outcome? The outcome defines the process required.
The more times we run the process, the easier it becomes.
There's a process to washing dishes and mine may differ than yours.
There'a process to putting dishes away, and while my process my differ from yours, the outcome is the same.
I have a process to take a book from idea to bestseller.
Worthwhile goals demand effort, risk, and sacrifice. You have to persist through fear and doubt. You have to draw on inner resources and become more than you were before. Challenges make us more than who we're were before. Every new challenge serves as an initiation - you meet discouragement, you over come discomfort, boredom, and frustration, and in the end you find out what you’re made of.
What pulls you through is the vision that inspired you to begin the quest. It can draw you like a magnet through the muck and mire. The first step in any process is to creating a direction by choosing a goal that lights a spark in you. Lean towards what excites you, what makes your heart smile. The question to ask is “Is it worth the effort and sacrifices that are inherent in the commitment to it?”
You won’t discover it (the goal) by waiting for divine revelation or absolute certainty. Often times the path won’t appear until you take the first step.
Lofty dreams in the distant future can be a heavy burden to carry. Instead, the best goals to focus on are often near term - what you can do this week, today, or even in the next hour. It’s in creating a process that yields many small successes that grand successes are built on.
Any great success is built on years of effort. Overnight quick successes don’t last long (ie. lucky breaks). They eventually crumble. Only the hard earned results stick.
OMG - this is exactly what happened with my ‘luck’ of getting on Amazon’s referral list. It took 3 years, but eventually that luck ran out.
The road to happiness is always under construction. As time passes, every process includes repairs. Focus on taking life one step at a time until you get it right (recall the process of stepping away from the tree and throwing the rock. Sometimes, you’ll have to step back closer until you hit the tree, then you can step back again). When discipline and patience join forces, they become the persistence that endures the peaks and valleys that carry you intention to completion.
Enthusiasm sets the pace, but persistence reaches the goal. Process, patience, and persistence (3Ps) are the keys to unlock the door to any destination. The treasure isn’t only at the journeys end, the process itself is it’s own reward.
Reach one goal and you’ll only create another - the journey never ends. Hidden in the obstacles are the seeds to our next goal.