The end of excuses, and a new beginning

Back to where I was yesterday.  I’m going to finish this last part. 

Race/Ethnicity/Gender:  Also blatant, pointless excuses when it comes to reaching your goals.  Think race matters or gender matter?  Examine the habits of Oprah Winfrey or Jay Z.  Both probably end up fairly close to what Tom Corley identified with his study of the habits of the rich.  See, behaviors are gender/race/ethnicity independent.  If you spend three hours a day in front of the TV after work, it doesn’t matter what your race or gender, you are going to end up going nowhere.  But if you spend those three hours a day working on your goals, then you will achieve your goals. 

If you haven’t guessed, most excuses are pointless.  And stupid.  So quit making them.  Next time you start stating why you can’t do something, add the mental sound of a crying baby behind it.  It will strike you as hilarious and make you realize your excuses are just as ridiculous as the temper tantrum of a two year old.

Now that we know excuses are a waste of time, let’s start looking into what it does take to succeed.  Let’s throw an example out there.  Let’s say you want to be an author, but you have no idea how to do it.  Well, the first thought is come up with an idea.  Once you have an idea for your book, the next step is to write.  And this is the part where most people fall apart.  They have an idea, but action is never put towards an idea.   So how long would it take me to write a 100,000 word novel?  I mean, that’s a lot of words, right?  

How about 300 words a day?  Can you write 300 words every day?  Yeah, that’s much more reasonable and shouldn’t take more than an hour a day.   If you write on average 300 words per day, at the end of one year, you will have written 109,500 words. 

Wow.  So you just wrote your 100,000 word novel, 300 words at a time in a single year.  If you can produce 400 words a day, then you can write your 100,000 word novel Monday through Friday and have the weekends off. 

See, we’ve been told a nice Hollywood lie.  We are taught and told that success happens in great giant bursts.  It all gets crammed into a five minute training montage.  And that’s just crap.   Success in anything is a matter of eating an elephant.  How does one eat an elephant?  One bit at a time.  For a long time.  Success is a matter of constant, small accumulations.  It’s going to the gym seven days a week for a year.  It’s saving $20 a week for a year (that’s $1,040 in a year without any effort). 

So, your goal for the rest of your life is daily accumulation of effort.  Can you produce 400 words a day to achieve your goal?   I mean, you do want to achieve this goal, right?