You are excited, encouraged and determined.
You have made up your mind. You see people saying about it everywhere. It is time to follow your gut. It is time to pursue your dream.
Millions of people have been doing that. They are living their dreams. They are successful, wealthy and happy. Everything comes to them naturally once they decide to follow their hearts. They do things they enjoy, they work for themselves while changing people’s lives.
You feel it in your heart. You know it is your turn now.
You have never felt more right. You know this is the best decision you’ve ever made. And you know success is waiting for you at the corner.
However, even though the thought of living your dream is tempting, those successful people still hide something from you. Something you don’t see from their perfect lives, or they just never share with anyone.
The first painful phase after you decide to pursue your dream.
This is the thing they kept from you. You thought once you decided to follow your guts, windows would open for you. You would find all the opportunities you sought for, all the support you needed and you would focus 100% on your goal.
But reality turned out to be something opposite.
Sure, they said it would be hard, but they didn’t say it was that hard. Only after you start to follow their path, you can experience them yourselves.
Feeling overwhelmed, burnout and exhausted
It is true that after you decide to chase your dream, you will be able to find all the knowledge you need. But you will soon realize that the amount of knowledge is tremendous, and it will take you months, even years, just to study them.
What can you do? You need that knowledge right away because you already started.
You push yourself to the limit, trying to consume as much information as possible while maintaining your normal duties. You always feel that you are behind schedule, behind others and you are not learning fast enough.
You will wish you realize this much sooner and decide to follow this path much earlier. You see people who started couple years ahead of you, you wish you could have done the same thing.
You sleep less. You get stressed, and it keeps you awake at night. You feel overwhelmed, burnout and exhausted.
Giving up on pleasures and treats
You used to have your special treats and pleasures. You used to spend time for yourself. But they will turn to be so luxurious.
You love laying in the bathtub and relax for an hour? Not anymore. You will find yourself hurry in the shower to come back to work.
You love listening to newest music and singing along? Not anymore. You will find yourself listening to TED talks, motivational speech and studying new audio lessons.
You will stop going out at night, stop watching your favorite movies show, stop reading your drama novels. Because you will invest those times in your work.
Sometimes, you will even abandon some of your normal duties which are not compulsory and urgent.
You make your dream the top priority of your life. And you alter your routine to make it happen.
Self-doubt about your ideas
You will think that you have worked a lot and you have done everything people tell you to do. But there is no sign that things will pick up whatsoever.
You read many people’s success stories and you try to follow them all. But you will not have enough time to implement all of their methods. When you don’t see any result, you will question that strategy and you change from an approach to the next.
Worse, you will think that your idea is not worth it after all. You will think that no one will ever care about what you have to say. You think you are not talented, you do not have what it takes to succeed.
Thought of giving up
After trying every possible advice you read, you will be stuck with your next move. You will be confused about all the advice, which one you should follow and which one to ditch.
Worse, when you see all the hard work doesn’t seem to pay off, you question yourself and your ideas, you will even think of giving up.
You will start asking yourself if it is worth the effort. Should you stop or should you keep going?
“What if I keep going and it will never pay off? How am I supposed to know if I have what it takes to succeed?”- You said to yourself many times.
Failure
You will fail. Most of the time. Successful people are not the ones that never fail, but they are still failing most of the time, but they do not see them as failures. They perceive them as learning opportunities so they can do better next time and succeed.
Same to you. But at the beginning, when you do not see any result, it is even harder for you to accept it as it is.
At the beginning, you will screw up. You can screw up on things that are so easy and simple even after you watch tutorials. It is also easy to get frustrated, beat yourself up and question your self-worth.
How to nail this first phase
Don’t be scared. The truth is that even though this phase is so painful that you wish it would be over soon, but you will learn and develop a lot.
In fact, about 80% of all the knowledge you need can be found and discovered during this phase.
It doesn’t mean you have to tell yourself “OK, buckle up. Things will go down soon”. In contrast, you can change your approach to have a healthier, happier and more determined first phase.
Let’s make your first phase as fun and motivating as possible.
Follow one mentor
The most frustrating thing you can do is to jump from an approach to the next. When you find a good mentor and you think his method suits you, stick with him. All those methods and strategies take time.
So instead of wasting your time trying to find something that can bring fast results, just follow one mentor to the end. And have patience.
Set realistic goals
You are hurry to study because there is an ocean of knowledge you need to consume. You set extremely high goals for yourself and work until exhaustion to reach them.
Common situation. But it is the fastest way for you to be demotivated and lead to failure.
Spend time to come up with realistic goals that are challenging but attainable.
Give yourself some rest
Following your dream is hard work. And you will find yourself staying up late to work until your energy runs out, sleep only a few hours before doing things all over again. You will lack sleep, big time.
You think it is normal? Perhaps.
But for extremely successful people, that is not the way they work. Lack of sleep can cause some physical and mental damage. It makes you less productive and sharp.
Give yourself enough rest so your body and brain can fully recover. Do not beat yourself up for sleeping. Thank yourself for spending time and restore energy so you can focus better.
It is all worth it
It doesn’t matter if you successfully overcome this first phase without burnout, self-doubt, and failure or you feel exhausted and fail most of the time, this whole thing is really worth it.
Once you taste the bitterness of failure, the sweetness of success is wonderful.
In this first phase, you do not see any considerable result because all the work happens beneath the ground. When you pass this first phase, things will take off faster than you ever imagined.
Think of your dream as a bamboo. Your bamboo is growing deeply to the ground to get a steady root. Once this phase is completed, it will sprout and develop faster than anything.
You will be living your dream. You will no longer work for a job you hate, wandering around just to get through the day.
Everything is in the right place. You get all the support you need. You make a difference in the world and make people’s lives better.
You will enjoy every single moment in your life so much that when you think back, you feel so silly to even doubt yourself.
Sounds unrealistic? It’s not.
The first step is to determine that you will pursue your dream no matter what. And from there you thrive.
Before you go
I believe we can create our own happiness. I help overwhelmed and frustrated people to ditch their stress and enjoy their lives again. Grab your free actionable cheatsheet: 5 Simple Tips to Release Stress and Bring You Calm in Under 5 Minutes and join her free 7 Joyful Days Challenge email course.