“You can never cross an ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”
Have you ever felt lost, uncertain or bewildered about what to do next?
Perhaps you have a goal that you desperately want to achieve, but you don’t know where to begin. Maybe you have thought about starting a business, changing careers, improving your health, learning something new, or pursuing a dream that has been mulling around in the back of your mind for a while.
The difficulty is often not knowing exactly how to begin and how to even reach that destination. The challenge is having the courage to take the first step when the destination is still unclear.
Imagine yourself sitting in a boat on the ocean. As you move farther away from the shore, eventually the land disappears from view. While you can still see the shoreline, there is a certain comfort in knowing that you can turn around and return to the shore. The shore becomes the safety blanket, a stabilizer and reference point.
But what happens when the shore disappears from view? This is the point where we must trust our boat and the navigation equipment, trust our initial preparation that we made before starting the journey, and our own ability to reach the destination we want to reach. We keep moving forward, even though we can no longer see the point where we started. Life and business can both feel the same.
Find the Navigation System
When we are working toward something important, our equivalent of the navigation system is our purpose. Our purpose is the reason for doing what we do. It is our ‘Why’
Our ‘Why’ might be building a successful business so we can provide more opportunities for our family and those who we hire. It might be to help others solve a problem, creating something meaningful, achieving financial independence, contributing to the community, or just becoming the person you know you are capable of becoming, developing the skills that move you forward.
Our purpose gives us the direction for our actions.
Without a clear reason behind our goals it is much easier to lose motivation, get distracted and change course when things become more difficult. We might ask ourselves, “is it really worth it?”
I know this from experience when being on a diet and just seeing that delicious biscuit asking to be eaten! If we have a deep and strong reason or purpose, it is much easier to leave the biscuit. This doesn’t mean that knowing our ‘why’ magically eliminates the problem, The biscuit is still there. It actually does something more important. It strengthens our reason, our ‘why’ and helps to decide what is worth doing, or not doing.
Create the compass
Write the answer to these 5 questions
- What do I really want to achieve?
- Why is this important to me?
- How will my life be different?
- What would happen if I choose not to do this?
- Who else will benefit?
Let your purpose evolve, the answers don’t need to be perfectly figured out. The goal is simply to create the compass that helps us to move forward and make better decisions. You don’t need to know everything to begin.
You don’t have to know everything to begin
One of the biggest obstacles faced to build success is the belief of needing to have everything figured out before we start. In reality, things evolve, change and shape themselves.
When I first wrote just a single poem for a school assembly, I had no idea that this poem would become lyrics to a song and that I would then write 11 more which then became an album of songs for children. I had no idea how to do this initially. I didn’t know ‘how’ at each of the stages. The question I would ask myself is ‘what might be the first step that I can do’?
By the way, my purpose is to positively impact millions of people around the world.
Each step is a learning opportunity. We may not how to reach the end point today, we learn how to do it, this is how we build experience. As long as we are capable of learning and have the courage to admit and say ‘I don’t know how’ yet, we can make progress. To admit we don’t know how isn’t a weakness, it is an awareness. It opens the door to learning and usually if you can find the right person, it is a gift to someone else too who can teach us how to do it. This is where mentors, coaches, teachers, books, videos and courses can be valuable. Doors can open when you are aware.
Learn what you need to learn along the way
Please watch this TED talk about an amazing young man who kept moving forward one step at a time.
Change Your Mindset and Achieve Anything
Remember when you first learned to drive a car?
I took driving lessons and before my first lesson I had no clue how to control the car. I learned over time and started out learning the basics and building confidence. I love driving and I would say it is one of my favorite things to do, (as long as there is no traffic to hold me back). Stop waiting for the perfect moment. If I hadn’t learned to drive, I would be missing out on one of my favorite things to do that brings joy.
What is the next thing to learn?
Asking ourselves specific questions can often produce more useful answers. Begin this week by thinking about the possible challenges faced and instead of putting it on the back burner and saving it for another day (which usually doesn’t come), ask yourself 3 questions;
- What can I do to move this forward?
- Who do I know who can help me learn?
- What skill do I need to learn?
Focus on progress. If your goal is to write a book, write the first page or a skeleton of thoughts that might be in the book. If you are looking to improve health, choose one sustainable habit that you can do. I traded drinking hot water instead of coffee. This might not be for you, it’s what I chose. Spend some time learning a new skill. I’m learning Spanish with an instructor. I am building on something I didn’t know before.
The actions may seem insignificant, but they do create momentum. I have gone from not knowing a word of Spanish to being able to present in Spanish last week.
You learn significantly more by doing.
You can plan a voyage without leaving the harbor, study maps, review weather reports but eventually you need get in the boat and sail it. This is how successful people operate. They create direction, take action, gather information and adjust accordingly.
Have a success mindset
Success begins long before the results become visible. It begins with the way we approach the task and the way we think. A growth mind set will ask questions such as ‘what can I do next?’ ‘What is one thing I can do today?’ ‘What can I learn from doing this’? A healthy mindset acknowledges there could be difficulties and yet still believe it is possible and that it can be improved upon.
Time management Tip: Make the right choice in the moment
We often think of time management as creating schedules and check list of to-do’s that are, never ending. Effective time management is to make the choices with the time available to us. At any given moment there are so many things screaming for our attention. The question is not always ‘how do I get more done’, but ask ‘what is the most valuable thing I can do right now’?
Many people don’t begin for numerous reasons. The key is to just start, stop the procrastination and just start. Every significant achievement started with something quite small. You may not know exactly how everything will work, you may not have the resources or confidence. Believe in yourself, that you can do it and just begin.