There’s Mess In Progress

Photo by Senjuti Kundu

You don’t see it. It seems like all this work isn’t making anything happen. You keep working and creating, but nothing’s changed. That’s the mess in your progress.

Please, don’t give up. Success doesn’t happen after you put forth two days worth of effort. Keep in mind, you are building. While you are building, you are (believe it or not) making progress.

Making progress looks like this:

  • starting from scratch
  • having ideas
  • doing what works
  • it didn’t work
  • figuring out what went wrong
  • starting over
  • different ideas
  • do it again
  • repeat

It may look like a big mess to you, but it’s called progress.

There’s not a one-minute formula that makes you succeed every time, at everything. You fail your way to success – that’s the actual progress. Very rarely, has anyone done everything correctly the very first time and was a success. It just doesn’t happen.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Failing is learning what didn’t work, so you won’t do it again. When you fail, you’re not wasting time, you’re working on making it better. Anybody else would have stopped after the fifth attempt, but you kept going and creating and figuring the little things out. That’s what leads to success.

Imagine if we could be a success after the first attempt at everything. Success wouldn’t be success, because everybody would be successful. There would be no value in it. Everyone would be successfully average.

Do the work and see the results.

Everyone sees the results, but no one sees the process. The progress is in the process – that’s where all the blood, sweat and tears happened. That’s where late nights and early mornings happened. That’s where your mind kept going, after your body was tired. That’s where, “I can’t do this” turns into “I got this.”

Other people will talk you out of it. Don’t join them and talk yourself out of it, too. It’s not that it’s never going to work – you’re just not finished, yet. That’s it. Keep going.

Have faith in yourself and know that you are capable of achieving success. The mess in the middle is a way of pushing you towards your greatness. Work through it. Success is just on the other side and you’ll be happy you did.