Why am I not further along on my journey?

Having spent the last few years with top performers from all over the country, there is one question that comes up over and over again that can cause so much pain and anxiety:

"Why am I not further along on my journey?"

Why don't I have a bigger bank account? Why don't I have a job that I love? Why don't I live in my dream home? Why don't I have the perfect partner and wonderful kids? Why haven't I got that promotion that should be mine?

I could go on and on with these questions. And the crazy part is, they can always be present for us no matter how much success we may have already had.

Why don't I have my second investment property yet? Why haven't I raised my third VC fund? Why is my fourth startup not taking off as fast as my first three did?

We have these expectations instilled upon us that we "should" be further along on our journey than we are. We see someone else who may be two steps ahead of us in one particular thing we are measuring them against and that in some way makes us feel inferior or as if we are not enough.

I do this. ALL. THE. TIME.

I've just done it again with writing on this site. I want to write every day. I can feel the benefits of writing consistently and see others who do it. I know it's possible, and yet I'm not there yet. Hell, I don't even have stable place to call home right now. So why am I trying to project myself forward into this place where I have the structures in place to publish a post every morning? I want to be in that place, I am not there yet, and I've allowed this to cause internal friction.

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Whenever I experience this "I should be further along" feeling, I do a few things:

1. I bring awareness to this feeling. I consciously recognize that I am having this thought (again) where my mind projects where I "should" be. I see you thoughts.
2. I have compassion for myself and these beautiful thoughts that simply want a better life for me. Thank you, mind, for seeing the future better than it currently is. What a gift!
3. I find gratitude. Mostly this shows up as gratitude for being exactly where I am at on my journey. My past has led me to this exact moment, and I wouldn't change a thing. My experiences have shaped me into the human that am I, and I am forever grateful for that.

Part of being a Creator is that we are bringing new things into this world that don't exist. We see the opportunity for change, the possibility of building a better future. From that place, it feels natural to have feelings about why we aren't further along.

When we can bring awareness and compassion to those feelings and have gratitude for exactly where we are at, we can harness this energy to pull us forward and release any negativity we might associate with being exactly where we are at in this moment.

What is happening today?

Today is an experiment.

Every day is an experiment really. To see if we can be a little better today than we were yesterday. To see if we can set ourselves us for a better tomorrow. And to see if we can balance it all while being fully present in the moment.

Today is the beginning of an experiment for me that I've been thinking about for a while.

Today is my attempt to bring a lot of threads of my life together in one coherent direction. To dance with the alignment that has been presented before me.

I am beyond excited for what this could mean. I am humbled to be in a time and space where I can test my hypothesis and learn from all that life is showing me.

Today feels like the start of something magical, and I remind myself that this is an experiment. Experiments fail all of the time. And that feels okay too.

Why is it so easy to break commitments?

It only took 9 days into my commitment of publishing a post every day before I broke that commitment.

I had a full day with early morning meetings until a dinner meeting late night. I didn't intentionally break my commitment. It honestly slipped my mind until the next day when I realized I hadn't wrote anything.

Once I missed that first day of writing though, it was an integrity check for me that I struggle with. At that time, my blog posts weren't public yet, as I was publishing them behind the scenes. I could very easily have written two blog posts that next day, changed the date on one and then moved on as if nothing happened.

But that didn't feel good. So I didn't. Instead I stopped writing for 11 days until I finally decided that I wanted to start posting again, not try to play catchup and hid my break of commitment, and just roll with it.

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For me in this situation, it could be said that I wasn't fully committed. It could also be that I was trying to force myself into this new behavior. Or any other number of reasons or excuses why I didn't follow through.

At the end of the day, I didn't have the right structure in place to follow through with my commitment. I didn't have a plan for what to do when I didn't write first thing in the morning. And before you know it, the day was over.

Keeping to our commitments is a matter of integrity, something that I hold in the highest regard. In this matter, it's not a big deal. The world moves irregardless of my 11 day absence.

More importantly, I allowed my "keeping commitments muscle" to get a little weaker. Time to put in more work in the gym, build the habit of publishing every day and hold my commitments to a higher standard.

How do I get started?

I can't tell you how many times I've answered this questions for entrepreneurs at the earliest stage of building something, so I find it quite comical that I asked my friend the exact same question this morning.

"How do I get started?"

In my case, my friend is a content marketing gangster working with super high profile people. When people ask me, it's normally in regards to how do I take this idea that I can't stop thinking about and make it real.

It could be about starting anything, and the answer is almost always the same.

So I had to laugh when my friend gave me the exact same advice that I've passed along so many times.

"Who are the people and companies who have already done this?"

We are this beautiful time in human history where no matter what we want to do or accomplish, there's almost always someone who has done something similar enough already. And even better, that origin story is available somewhere on the internet.

Find the people who have already done what you want to do and learn everything you can about what they did when they were at the stage you are at now. No need to reinvent the wheel. It's all out there waiting for you.

If you want to get started and you're not sure where to begin, look to those who have been there and done that.

How was it received?

One of my favorite follow-up questions when a leader tells me about a difficult conversation that they've had is:

"How was it received?"

When having difficult conversations with people we care about, it can be challenging to just say what we want to say. We become completely focused on the content of the message.

The next level beyond that the content is understanding how it was received.

It is our job as leaders to be present to how we are being received. We have the opportunity to tailor our message and delivery so that the recipient can absorb our message, understand our position, integrate any feedback, continue an open dialogue, not feel attacked, and actually deepen the relationship.

When we first make a choice to have difficult conversations, we tend to focus all of our energy on getting our points out. As we become more experieced in having these conversations, it becomes important to understand how that message will be received and optimize for that.