Don't Give Up!
Posted On: 2015-10-30
Well here is another month just about gone; am I the only one who finds that just a little bit scary?
Not only has the month just about gone but so has the year so are we brave enough to look back and see what we have achieved this year? If I turn around and take a quick look back I think that I can see that I have achieved a lot but I'm not sure that all that work and all those achievements have moved me much closer to my goals.
If that's what you see when you look back then perhaps it's time for both of us to do a little panicking because, if we're not moving forward, then perhaps all those achievements and hard work have just been a total waste of time.
While that sounds as though I'm in a rather black mood right now ... and you might be falling into one too ... the fact is that I'm feeling rather optimistic.
At the start of the year I knew that this year would be a tough one. There were some serious financial and medical hurdles I was going to have to climb over and I'm just about there with the financial ones. The health ones I'm still working on and they are going to take a while longer but I'll get there.
At the start of the year I also knew that I wanted to change direction with my business. I didn't know what direction I wanted to take my business in, I just knew that I didn't want to be doing what I was doing for much longer.
Fortunately where I could take my business became much clearer after a visit to WordCamp a few months ago and now we're beginning to make the changes we need to move in that direction ... but I'm impatient. I want those changes to happen right NOW but of course they can't.
No business can instantly make a 90 degree change in direction ... well mine can't. Instead the change has got to be gradual but I just wish I could make it a whole lot less gradual than it is right now. However, I'm making progress and learning more and more about the new direction and that will help me in the months ahead.
So have you taken a quick look back? Are you happy with what you see or do you see a bunch of wasted opportunities and not much growth? Are you a long way from where you wanted to be at this time of the year?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we can end up beating ourselves up over those wasted opportunities but really, self-flagellation is a waste of time. If you've made mistakes and missed opportunities there's not a whole lot you can do about it now except learn from those mistakes and don't make them again as you move on.
And that is the important thing, you have to move on. You can't stay wallowing in self-pity and moaning that you've missed so many chances to make money; you just have to learn from those mistakes and move on.
It's the most important thing we have to do but it's also the hardest thing to do ... especially if we work alone and don't have others around us to who will prod us into moving forward.
When you have worked hard for almost a year and suddenly you realise that you haven't achieved anything it's very easy to become depressed and want to give up ... especially if those months have been difficult. Suddenly it becomes so easy to just throw your hands in the air and give up ... but really, where does that get you?
Giving up is simply not a solution to anything ... it's another problem that you are going to add to your life and who needs more problems?
If things really are that tough, if you really are struggling to move on now that you've seen how little you have achieved then take a break, get away from your computer and your work for a few days but don't give up!
Use that time to get your head back into a better place. Use that time to look at what you have been doing that hasn't helped you achieve your goals and look at new ways, different ways, of getting to where you want to be. Just don't give up!
A huge percentage of start-ups that fail do so because the people behind them gave up just before they were about to make the break through that they were aiming for so don't be like them, don't give up!
Look for better ways of achieving your goals; look for smarter ways of doing the work you have to do. Just don't give up!
And in case you missed the message here it's quite simple really: don't give up!