When Success Is Slow

Do not be anxious about anything, but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil. 4:6,7

When Success is Slow, What Can You Do? Adapted from Jack Canfield’s article

When we admire someone's success, or even our own, we often focus on the end result and not so much on the effort (and time) that it took to get there. This can cultivate unrealistic expectations, especially the idea that overnight success can happen through careful strategy and an execution of sound advice.

Success typically follows a series of little events and achievements that can seem to take an eternity, that include a few disappointments along the way, and that challenge everything about you to the core - your stamina, courage, integrity, and even your willingness to keep going.

If you focus on what's not working: You're likely coming from a place of aggravation as your mind wraps around all that is wrong. You may even have negative thoughts like "I'm not good enough," "It will never work," or "Something must be wrong with me." What this mentally does is engender more of these counter-productive feelings. And given what we know about the Law of Attraction, you attract what you are feeling. So negative experiences, people, and results will beget more negative experience, people, and results. There's not much success in that.

The key, then, is to focus on what IS working. To do so, I recommend two simple practices: journaling and meditation.

• Maintaining a journal (Gratitude Journal) is a great way to steer your attention to the positive and continually renew your vision for yourself.
• Start each day with reflections on what you are grateful for in your life (list them out!) and end each day with notes on what went right (again, write them down), however small.

Take Action. You may be taking the actions you are used to taking. But therein lies the problem: if you keep doing what you've already done then you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. It's a matter of practicing some new behaviors. Shake things up a bit and see if you can take new actions or modify existing ones.

Remember the Rule of 5. Every day do five specific things that take you toward your goal.

Change up the five actions regularly and be open to feedback so you know when you're off course.

Be patient. It's natural to underestimate how long a certain goal can take, especially a profound one. When I set a goal to become a millionaire the year was 1983. How long did it take? Eleven years. It took time for Chicken Soup for the Soul to hit the bestseller lists. You could say our tenure on the New York Times list was more than a decade in the making. That's a lot of patience for someone who initially wanted overnight success.
Patience is a virtue. But keep at it, and in no time, you'll be only one week, or one day away from your ultimate success. Remember... be grateful, reflect on what IS working and continue to take ACTION!

Thanks to Donna for this post!