Wanting The Results Without The Effort Or: The Long Game Is Not A Game If You Love What You Do

Grant Ritchie

If you do not love what you do, you are not likely to stick with it long enough to be able to make it successful. You need to love the process. And when you love the process it does not really matter if you are successful as you are getting to do what you love.

However, as a side effect, it is more likely that you will be successful BECAUSE you are doing something that you love, and all the positive energy slowly makes an impact. 

I was speaking to a server in a cafe whilst getting my lunch.  It was 31st Jan after having a dry January and also cutting out caffeine, grains, any white carbs, sugar etc. As I was paying for my salad I joked that I might treat myself to one of everything they sell tomorrow as a treat for being good in January. She said, "if I was as skinny as you, then I would eat everything every day." Clearly, we were both joking, but as I walked away I found it interesting that people do want results without knowing what it takes to get there. If I ate anything every day, then I would not be skinny.

It is strange how our brains do this to us.  It is easy to see the muscled man or the toned woman and assume that it is easy for them, they are just fit, rather than thinking that they might have been fat, geeky children for all but 1 year of their life and they have worked really hard every day to keep working out and avoiding the temptation of eating crap in order to look like that.

The same thing happens in business - nothing is an overnight success. People with overnight successes have worked for ten years behind the scenes (and will work hard for at least 10 more years) to make something that you have not heard of one day and that everyone's heard of the next day.

It builds, it does not bang.

People want results without the effort.  If you asked someone if they wanted to win the lottery they would, of course, say yes. If you said to them that they could have even more money than a lottery win and all they had to do was work on themselves for 15 years for 15 hours a day without a day off, do you think that they would do it? I think not.

Enjoy the journey - make the results be the side product.

---