You have an idea. A plan. There is a clear vision as to what you want to accomplish. Personally in your career, private life, or in your organization.
You have told others what you are seeking. Where you want to go. What your tomorrow looks like. Your dreams seem so real, well organized and almost already living.
But you are not there yet. You are at the beginning. It feels strange. You enter a world of uncertainty and false starts where you experience one step forward and three steps back. Dead ends appear where there were none in your final story.
Is it me? Do I have the skill to accomplish what I set out to? Is my dream too ambitious that there is no chance of it succeeding? There is no real way of knowing.
What’s really frustrating is that even with resources, nothing seems to be coming together. I’ve done so many pieces independently of what I now set out to do yet now nothing quite works the way I need it to.
For writing three hundred words (at a time) is very different from writing fifty-thousand words to publish a book. Where getting ten people to agree to a vision is far different than thirsting excitingly for the vision you have come to believe, in only your heart, to be worth pursuing. Finding the right people, the necessary resources, and working so hard to jump start towards a first win that seems so elusive during your journey is quite challenging.
We take for granted what it took to make valuable work. The author or playwright is dead. The poet can no longer speak. The artist has grown old. The musician has forgotten the days of being alone. Their struggles go unnoticed when all we see is the valuable outcome of their time spent.
Life’s funny that way. It’s easy to appreciate valuable work after it has appeared and so hard to imagine how difficult it was to create. Especially when you are in the middle of trying. The critics voice is loud during the journey. The disappointments sting as we step out into the different world we are trying to create. We can’t find the right pieces to put together in our jigsaw puzzle.
It’s really hard to keep going. The paths twist and turn with no clear sight of the end when we embark on our journey.
We need the agility of an athlete to adjust quickly never losing sight of where we want to go. For the journey will involve many adjustments along the way while holding on tight to a vision that only we totally understand.
New skills, new friends, tough feedback, and a tremendous amount of time (much more than we thought) will be needed as we work towards work that has value. All of us have the potential to do this. Gaining the muscle to persist will take time but can be so rewarding once you try.