Using Elbow Grease to Set Yourself up for Success
Keep your vision and your goals on the tip of your tongue. Each action that you undertake should not only give God glory but should move you closer to your goals and your ultimate God-inspired vision.
What is your driving goal?
You know, that one thing that pushes you more than everything else?
Maybe it’s getting married, being a good mother, creating an impact, donating $1 million to charity, spending time abroad with impoverished communities, lowering the rate of crime in your neighborhood, introducing curriculum at your university.
Whatever it is, why do you want it and how do you get there?
We can’t just be like Dorothy and follow the yellow brick road… that won’t get us to where we want to go, only where that road leads.
Let’s dive deep for a moment.
Think about the following four questions and recognize how long it takes you to answer each one:
— Where do you want to be 1 year from now?
— Where do you want to be 5 years from now?
— Where do you want to be 10 years from now?
— Where do you want to be 25 years from now?
Which questions did you answer quicker? Which ones took a little more time? Did you have definitive answers for each of those questions?
You absolutely should. Each question should have an answer on the tip of your tongue.
God created us for a purpose, what is that purpose? Keep your vision and your goals on the tip of your tongue. Each action that you undertake should not only give God glory but should move you closer to your goals and your ultimate God-inspired vision.
“Everyone has a plan until…”
Do you know the end of that quote from Mike Tyson?
“until… they get punched in the mouth.”
We might have the yellow brick road all built out. We think we can just follow it to the goal that we have set out. After 12 months we’ll have a liquid $20,000 then we can buy our first rental property. We can purchase that for $200,000 with 10% down with two tenants inside that will flow $400/month in net cash after expenses. That’s great… until our car breaks down, the engine dies, and it costs $5,000 to repair so we end the year at $17,000, not $20,000, and the duplex we were going to purchase is off the market! So much for the owner agreeing to sell to us… Money talks.
We need to work harder than we thought we would.
“Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years.”
An arrow needs to be pulled back until it can power forward.
There are going to be numerous occasions where you need to pull yourself back for an explosion of forward progress.
Maybe that means working 80 hours a week for a period of 2 months.
Maybe that means skipping birthday parties for a year to work.
Maybe that means calling your brother only once a week instead of every other day.
Maybe that means embracing your singleness for a period of time.
Maybe that means bringing your kids to the office with you.
Whatever it means, work hard in silence.
Humility. How do you define it? Humility. Humility is defined as "freedom from pride or arrogance: the quality or state…harrisonwendland.com
Work hard in silence, but once you have the fruits? Shine the sun on them and watch them sparkle!
“Shining the spotlight on yourself doesn’t make you arrogant, it shows you’re confident you can handle the pressure that comes with it.” — Harrison Wendland
“No competition I’ve got my own vision.”
Nobody else is going to share your goals and ultimate vision — especially not if it’s God inspired as it should be.
— Where do you want to be 1 year from now?
— Where do you want to be 5 years from now?
— Where do you want to be 10 years from now?
— Where do you want to be 25 years from now?
Think about it. Really truly think about it.
Take a week or a month and establish a picture that you can FEEL.
What is success? How do we get it? I've been having a number of conversations with people recently. As I'm working on…harrisonwendland.com
“Never write down a goal if you’re not going to write down all the activities and energy required to achieve that goal along with it.” — Eric Thomas
Here’s the beautiful thing of it all… when a goal IS God-inspired… the time to accomplish that goal will be in HIS time and NOT ours. If we think it will take 5 years, maybe God wants it done in 1. WHEN we work faithfully for HIS purposes and not our own, His purposes can come through.
Use elbow grease.
Apply pressure.
Push the envelope.
Strive for more.
Extinguish the fires.
Level the obstacles.
Pursue a greater purpose and do more than you ever thought possible.
Get it done.
Then do it again. And again. And again.
You are going to experience things that seem immovable.
The best way to chop down a tree? One swing of the ax at a time.
Discouragement is temporary — resilience is forever.
“People don’t get kept up at night by their dreams, they fall asleep and dream about them.”
“When the going gets rough, when the going gets tough, when I think I’ve had enough, I KNOW what to do… my job.”
Pain is temporary.
EVERY plant gets strangled by weeds UNTIL they grow bigger and stronger than them.
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