Motivation

Not Making Progress Fast Enough

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One of the main reasons people quit their endeavors before achieving what they set out to do is that they don’t believe they’re making progress fast enough, they’re not as far along as they think they should be.

This sort of thinking is often a protective mechanism meant to preserve the idealized self-image in the face of evidence threatening to topple it over. At the unconscious level it comes down to a choice between abandoning the endeavor and maintaining the idealized self-image or sticking with the endeavor and abandoning the idealized self-image. It’s easier to choose option number one and that’s what a lot of people do, they come up with some rationalization to justify why they’re quitting and then go about their lives confident in their superior talents and abilities since there are no longer any inputs from the environment to cast doubt on these perceived talents and abilities.

The only solution that makes any sense if you find yourself in this position is to stop focusing on where you think you should be and start focusing on giving everything you have to where you are. Improvement doesn’t happen all at once but it also doesn’t always happen in a smooth upward curve, there are often ‘aha!’ moments along the way, bursts of progress where people suddenly put it all together and make great strides. Things might be moving slower than you would like right now but you never know when that great leap forward is going to occur. If you quit it never will.

There are many factors outside of your control but what you can control is sticking with what you’re doing and giving your maximum effort. If you do these things you can consider the journey a success regardless of the outcome. Much better to struggle towards actual talents and abilities, even if they’re not what you thought or hoped they were, than to live in a fantasy world where you never find out what you’re really capable of but fool yourself into thinking you did.