Am I Making Progress or Going Nowhere?
We’ve all heard the encouraging words when you’re at the beginning of a lofty goal.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”
Or the metaphor of the bamboo tree which is watered for 5 years with no visible result. Suddenly, it leaps out of the ground and reaches great heights — the 5 years of seemingly no progress were spent laying the deep roots necessary for its spectacular growth.
Even the “overnight success” that was actually years in the making offers reassurance for any patient seeker of success.
There’s no doubt that most of the time, success starts slow — and there’s no direct feedback that you’re doing the right thing. But that doesn’t automatically mean that if you’re at the start, and things are indeed going slowly — that you’re on the right path.
Every step could be veering off the path towards a dead end. Every action might just be a vain attempt to achieve something that wasn’t for you to achieve.
After all — the world needs people who tried and failed. Or a least, it has plenty of them.
I often wonder if I’m on a slow path towards exponential growth — the part that looks flat but is slowly compounding — or if I’m on a more depressing path of self delusion and grandiose fantasy.
Are my efforts compounding or dispersing into nothing?
Am I a bamboo tree or just a dud seed that keeps getting rained on?
I guess you never know unless you try. To be fair, it would be boring if you did know ahead of time.
It’s tough to be at the start. Life keeps kicking you down and showing you how tragically incomplete your understanding of how things work really is.
But that’s all part of the fun.
I’m just going to try and put the emphasis on enjoying the journey and keep going.
