You see the on stage or on screen performance by the actor. You do not see all the auditions and rejections or all the hours of practice training and preparation.

You see the on field performance by the athlete. You do not see all the hours of training their mind, body and craft. You don’t see the sacrifices they made to get to where they are. 

You see the TED talk. You don’t see the hours of planning, preparation, editing, practice, editing and rehearsal. 

You read the best selling book. You do not see the unpublished manuscripts, the trashed or deleted pages, the countless edits, the rewrites, and the hundreds or thousands of hours researching and writing. 

You see the finished product. You do not see the rough draft, not the person who once sucked at their craft. You do not see the struggles, the ups and downs, the rejections, or the thousands of hours of work that made up the journey to get to the person or product you see. 

We tend to glorify the finished product and sadly we often ignore the effort that was the journey. As a result, many people on the journey do not celebrate the journey, the effort, the struggles, the setbacks, the small wins, the countless days of showing up and the growth that happens slowly along the journey. 

If you wait and only celebrate the finished product the feeling of satisfaction may be fleeting. You may feel what so many do – “Is this it? I spent all those years for this?” If you learn to celebrate the journey, embrace the struggle, embrace the suck, look for the learning, look for the good and show up every day daring to be great then when you get the finished product you celebrate the accomplishment knowing that you did the work to earn it. Then you can get back to the ritual of doing the work knowing that you have done hard things before and you can do them again.   

What’s Important Now? Embrace the struggle, the suck, the effort and the journey that others don’t see.  

Take care.

Brian Willis

www.lifesmostpowerfulquestion.com. 

ONE QUESTION BRINGING FOCUS AND CLARITY IN THE CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY OF TODAY'S WORLD.

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