Let’s say you finally started the project you always wanted to start in your life.
Whether it was learning a language, playing piano, reading the books that interest you, or building and starting the business you always wanted to start.
There are many ways for sure to ruin the path, and before seeing the results and enjoying the fruits of your labor, you can make a lot of decisions that prevent you from reaching the mature point. It can be not being patient enough, or not putting enough effort and sweat that is required to make those things happen. But among many reasons that can prevent you from reaching what you always wanted is talking about what you are doing, your projects, your goals, and your dreams to others. One of the most effective ways to failure is to talk about your ideas before putting enough effort into them and witnessing their maturity. It’s like leaving a newborn baby in the wild and hoping that it will survive and nothing bad can happen to it. Instead of giving the required support and patience for its development, you are just killing it.
There are many disadvantageous to talking about your projects, goals, dreams, and ideas before seeing the outcome of implementing them. If you are taking steps toward what you want to accomplish, after a while, and after putting enough effort and patience into the process, you will see the results and others will also see the results of your hard work.
Let me give you a personal example. For a while, I wanted to become fit and lose weight. It is still one of my goals to stay lean, fit, and physically good-looking and attractive. It’s hard for me as a man to not spend time working out at the gym, but I knew that in addition to exercise, I needed a complementary and compatible diet, also self-discipline, and a lifestyle of healthy and fit individuals. I think this is a common and popular goal for many of us. So, I started to learn about calories, workouts, different methods, pro-bodybuilders, and their techniques. My conversations at work, with friends, family, and others were mostly focused on this idea. While it was a serious deal for me to learn about every possible aspect and method of losing weight and becoming physically strong, others were always joking about it and not taking it seriously. In our conversations, it was a very important topic for me, I talked about it as there was nothing more important than that in my life. But when others joked, it hurt and destroyed all the passion and motivation that I had for implementing the techniques in my life, for walking the extra mile and resisting eating the extra calories.
If I go back, what I would do is to silently follow that diet and continue working out every day. Eat more protein, and less carbs, and stay in the calorie deficit. Without talking about it to others, and without letting them know what I am about to accomplish and what I am doing every day. Until the time they see the results. When I have become completely fit no one can ignore that my physique has become better and improved. when I start talking about my passions and all the sacrifices that you are making in my life, others’ responses would immediately be that don’t make life too hard for yourself, have balance! And this is what exactly you don’t want to hear, their opinion. because they are not you, for them this game, whatever it is, going to a good college or starting a new business, is not as serious as it is for yours.
I gave you an example of fitness, but you can find dozens of related other examples. When you start learning a new language but it is only interesting for you and others don’t like that idea. When you start to gather all the information and even you implement them but when you always talk about that, others might night find it as interesting as you do.
I remember how important it was for me to move to another country, I was doing my best to get my student visa for Canada and the only people who knew were my parents and my uncle, the only ones that were helping me in this process. This is one of the most successful projects of my life. And I believe one of the reasons is that I didn’t tell anyone else about it and kept doing the hard work quietly but seriously every day. I was learning English every day, saving money as much as I could, and gathering all the required documents and no one knew about it. Even when I got my visa, and after a couple of weeks I landed in the new country, others got informed about it. And I think it was a good idea and contributed to the success of the project a lot. If I wanted to open up and talk about it, everyone who heard about it could easily discourage me and give me negative feedback about even attempting to do such a thing. Never underestimate the power of doubters and how effective they can be in stopping you from achieving what you want.
There can’t be anything more energy-consuming than spending time with people who are not in your community and don’t have the same and similar interests as you do. Talking to them about your dreams, about what makes you happy and brings joy and enthusiasm to your life, in the best case might sound useless and in the worst scenario only discourages you.
I can give you an example of learning a musical instrument so you can understand the concept better. Let’s say you finally took some action to learn the guitar and you took a couple of lessons and everything sounds great, except for the sound of that guitar that you are playing. It’s ok, don’t get too worried, it’s just the beginning and no one was perfect at the beginning of anything doing anything new. But do you know how you can ruin it? Tell everyone that you can play guitar (While you know that you actually don’t and still are steps away from mastering the instrument). Now everyone, including you is excited about it and wants you to play for them or tell them more about your progress. You also become excited and play a couple of beginner songs and make a few mistakes along the way. Everything is normal so far, you are a beginner, you make mistakes and the songs you can play are very basic, just to teach the instruments to beginners like you. What prevents you from moving forward to an intermediate level and eventually becoming an expert can be one of those discouraging comments that you receive before becoming good at something.
If you like something and have intrinsic motivation to do it, you shouldn’t look for others’ encouragement. Instead, all you want and need is to take action for that intrinsic interest and continue doing it. There is no need for extrinsic incentives, but their judgment and criticism can overcome your inherited enthusiasm and stop you from moving forward.
You do hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours of hard work, tear and pain and what other should see and need to see it the tip of the iceberg, the good part, where all of those effort shows itself.
This can be true for many other things, first, do it and see the results, if you fail, you can more easily start again and even might still have a chance to recover and give it the second and third try. And if you finally made it, and others also acknowledged your success, you can start talking about the path you took to reach this point how you overcame the challenges, and what methods and techniques you used for your accomplishment.
I am sure that every one of us has ideas that can change our lives and even the world, either we don’t take them or ourselves seriously, or we overshare the idea before taking any serious action that others’ criticism and judgment prevent us from making those ideas into a reality.
In the first step, take yourself and your dreams seriously, reflect on yourself and what interests you, do some self-discovery, and be honest with what you like. The more you try to get close to your real self and stay away from others’ wishes, desires, and opinions the higher your chances of finding what is unique and authentic to you. The second step is silently and quietly taking those steps. It doesn’t have to be a big career change or changing your city or lifestyle completely (Although it might be that big change that you need to) but for beginning you should start with the small steps, those that you are mostly afraid to take but they can get you close to what you want, even slightly, you get eventually closer to that idea, goal, and dream and someday, others when seeing the outcome and result of what you have done (Those small steps that have never been taking seriously but the aggregate outcome of them has become something outstanding and unneglectable), they will ask you about the success secrets and formulas.
I used to talk a lot about my blog and how passionated I am about writing, but I have stopped it a lot. If you ask me, I don’t like to send the link of this blog to people I know and don’t know. I like to continue writing, and if I deserved it, maybe after writing my first million words, Google give me the honor of recommending me to new audiences and readers and the daily visits of my blog gets more and more.
