Success Was Not Built In A Day

Those who know me know just how much I like to run around quoting the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”  Not only do I believe in it, but I live by it daily.

But even in saying that, let me also say that what you build does not come overnight. Success was not built in a day. It takes more than just words to get it done.

Therefore, forget about being an “overnight success.”  Get that thought out of your mind, right now. Companies don’t start today and make millions tomorrow—usually. Books are not released today and hit New York Times tomorrow without massive marketing. Success is built around blood, sweat, and tears.

The end result is what the public is now seeing. We see other people’s success and think, “I can do that.” And then we go about trying to get their end result, without determining the factors of the road that it took them to reach that end result.

We build a website and expect millions in sales to immediately fall into our laps. We start a blog and expect thousands of people to immediately gravitate to it after the first post. But what we don’t see is all the work it took those other people to get to that end result. We don’t see the training, planning, effort, thinking, praying, tireless work, and constant rejection it took to get them there.  We don’t see the years of hard labor that “overnight successes” put in to get the end result. We don’t see the 16-hour days these people spent building a foundation.

The bigger problem with this is when we get into the frame of mind in believing that success happens overnight, and then notice we haven’t succeeded to our unrealistic expectations, we tend to re-think ourselves, saying things like, “If I was good enough, I’d already have my meteoric rise to success.”  And then just like that, we give up.

So don’t do that.  Instead, notice the foundations that others have built their successes upon. Notice the practice, the hours of studying, the countless prior failures. Learn from those aspects. Replicate those aspects. Nobody with lasting success has built it overnight.

If you want to succeed, YOU TOO will need a solid foundation. So… start digging. Give yourself that long, much needed breath of oxygen, and stop expecting immediate perfection.