We are constantly being told that we can have it all: the perfect family, the successful career, time for our hobbies, and of course, volunteer work.
The fact is that they're only so many hours in a day, and you have a finite amount of energy. For example, if you're a morning person working a full-time job, it may not be very wise to start writing your book at 10 pm. It would be better to wake up 1 hour earlier and use that time where you're uninterrupted to move forward on your novel. Protect that chunk of time because your dreams matter.
Yes, you can do everything that you want, but not at the same time. When you have a project deadline, your family will take a backburner, and when your kid is sick, you won't be able to work full hours on your job.
Life is a balancing act of knowing what to prioritize every day. Having a morning routine will make you feel grounded and give you a sense of certainty in your life. It will give you the time to set your intentions, and it will prime your mood for the day ahead.
What can you delegate or delete from your life? Simplifying your life will make room to pursue those new goals.
There are an infinite amount of time management books, time tracking systems, and planners out there, that we think that if we just find the right one, we'd turn into a productivity ninja.
Prioritizing your top 3 goals for the day is what's going to make you more productive, not having the latest app or hack in order to accomplish more.
"You can get massive, overnight success." That's a big, fat lie that they want us to believe in order to sell us the "Get Rich Quick e-course," or the "1 Million Social Media Followers in 30 days Package" or "Lose 40 lbs. in the 1-month system".
The truth is that many of our goals will take time, but they will also require our sweat and tears, they will make us move beyond our comfort zone over and over again, and they will make us doubt if our dream is possible or even worthy of our efforts.
Yes, there are kids out there on Youtube under 25 that are already millionaires, and many more that are just taking selfies in hotels and with cars and yachts that don't belong to them, making you believe in their rich lifestyle. The fact is that even if some of them have made it young, out of luck, circumstances, or personality, 99.9% of the worlds' population will require hard work and many years to make their big dreams come true.
Mastery takes time, being an artist means improving your technique daily until one day you notice that you've developed your own style thanks to the process of trial and error, and you will finally have people wanting to buy your art. The same goes with any other craft, many writers have written books that flopped, but they kept on writing until one day their latest book became a bestseller.
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." —Albert Einstein
