How to Be an “Overnight” Success

All too often, we look at people who are more successful than we are in some area of life and we feel like they have something we don’t.

Some talent, gift or blessing…

And what we don’t see gives us an excuse not to start or to push ahead, but that excuse carries with it the heavy price of shame or regret.

We see someone who seems to fearlessly and confidently do what we would love to do. Instead of taking action, we often shrink into feelings of unworthiness as we compare how we feel to how they appear.

They seem so confident – so natural at what they are doing. We see an “overnight success” who seems to have it all.

We don’t see the missing piece that would encourage us and fill our stomachs with the fire to push ahead because society celebrates success. We see success on television, in magazines, and driving past us in supercars.

Of course, with our affinity for drama, we also get front-row seats to the messy aftermaths splashed across the tabloids when life falls apart for some of those people we thought were charmed…

But we rarely see the most important part of the puzzle…

The Struggle

The struggle to become great is too boring to broadcast.

Hours, days, weeks, years and sometimes decades of hammering away in the hopes of becoming great almost never make it onto television or into the gossip mags. But it’s in those hours of struggle that we become something better, something more than the people we were when we started out on our sometimes curvy journey to the place where we dream to be.

What we don’t see is the preparation and the toil.

We only see the end result – the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We don’t see the journey that we too must take and hopefully enjoy…

Thankfully, that journey is often not without moments of despair – moments where we question ourselves and our abilities, wondering if we really have what it takes (especially in those moments where everything seems to be going against us).

Those are the decisive moments…

What we choose to do and who we choose to become in those moments determines whether we will become great or fade away in defeat. Those moments are the iron that sharpens the steel, the refiner’s fire that burns away the insecurity, the deep-rooted fears of not being enough and the doubt, which often refuse to die until the pain of not doing what needs to be done looms far larger than the pressing but undefined pain inside our imagination.

I’ve been there often and find myself there every time I push beyond the familiar. And, I hope you’ve been there as well, because that place in time where you’re just not sure if you can carry on is the place where you get to choose to forge ahead – to take action, to get clarity about what really matters and to see your fears for what they really are…

Figments of your imagination

I wonder if you find it as fascinating as I do – how our fears always seem enormous before we start, but mysteriously dissolve once we finally stand up and start taking action. And that’s really the key, isn’t it?

To act. To move forward. To push through. To figure it out as we go. To trust that we’ll find a way.

If there’s something you want or more importantly, someone you want to become, I hope you’ve started. And if you haven’t, perhaps you’ll choose to start now and trust you’ll figure it out as you go along. You’ve made it this far, after all. Why not keep going?

Ah, yes…

Something Keeps Telling You Not To Do It

Perhaps your thoughts tell you why you can’t move forward – why you can’t do it. Pay no attention to those voices – they only want to protect you by reasoning that you’re alive where you are right now, so why take risks that might upset the balance. Like the mooring lines holding a ship in harbor, they want to protect you from the stormy seas.

But ships aren’t built to spend their lives in safe harbors, and neither are you…

That urge you have, that dream you may only dream to yourself wasn’t given to you without reason. It doesn’t call to you to frustrate you or to make you say, “One day.”

You Have Your Dreams for a Reason

Those dreams are there for you to pursue, and more importantly, to become who you need to become along the way.

So go out and pursue your dreams. Take the first step and then the next.

Trust that doors will open, even if you have to open them yourself.

The fear will fade away.

And one day, someone will look at you and wonder how you became an “overnight” success.