Vision

“Hard work wins every time” I believe this is true and I believe society believes this is true. And of course we know society is littered with people that are not willing to do the hard work hence they achieve very little and are labeled as “losers”, “dead beats”, “drop outs”, “wasters” and many more equally as fitting names.

But hey lets not worry about those guys, that would be a sad waste of both our time.

Let’s have a look at the guys that are willing to work hard, are willing to make sacrifices and are willing to do “whatever it takes.”

Just think for a moment if you are one of those people or if you know one of those people who literally puts everything into what they are doing, but success seems to sometime elude you or you “just can’t stay motivated” for long periods of time to ever finish your goal or meet your objective. This is a hugely common problem that I am seeing increasingly.

Why? Because society has conditioning us to believe that hard work is the way but forgot to tell us that “Vision” is key. So what is vision. Simply put it’s the ability to picture the future, the goal or the objective, no matter how near or far that may be.

So let’s bring this to life. You are 30kg overweight and we have already agreed that shedding that weight at a sustainable rate of 1-2kg per week will mean the job at hand is a 20 week project, just under 6 months, half a year. At the outset you see it as no issue, simple, small steps, basics. We both know it’s going to be hard as you are going to have to make sacrifices, to go without things, to suffer somewhat. 3 weeks in you have done everything and the progress is slow and things start to slip, therefore progress get’s slower and more starts to slip. So common in what I am seeing these days. Not only in weight loss but in other goals that seem to have longer time lines than 5 minutes or tomorrow!

All that we see is this hard work in the short term, we need to refocus, we need to think about our vision, our ability to picture the future, the longer term (in this case just past the 6 month mark). Imagine the benefits, the impact on your life in so many ways beyond that 6 months, that is where life is, that is why you are having to work so hard in the coming 6 months, but that requires vision is see far beyond and that to me is where the disconnect is happening.

So yes, focus on the short term things, be ready to work hard, super hard toward your goals but there are going to be times during the process that you wander why you are putting all this hard work in, those are the times where your vision needs to be crystal clear and where you have to totally understand the bigger picture, why you are doing what you are doing. Get that right and the hard work is just part of the process and in many situations a whole load of fun.

It may not be the lack of hard work, but lack of a bigger vision. What is yours?