Enter Gary Vaynerchuk.
I was watching an Instagram video of Gary, in which he was addressing a young entrepreneur about patience. The kid stressed that he keeps failing to reach his goals and Gary nonchalantly responds, “you put a time limit on it.”
And that response, as eloquent as it came out, was the only thing I needed to hear.
As the kid continued explaining his woes, Gary came back to the same point. Although the kid wanted advice, he was reluctant to meet Gary eye to eye about his previous comment. He mildly agreed that it was a good point but hesitated to fully internalize the amazing gem that it was.
I, for one, was shocked throughout this interaction because I’m thinking to myself, that’s it! I have been beating myself up for not reaching my goals too.
I can relate.
I can definitely relate to the pain that comes with constant nagging, especially when it comes from inside of you. It’s like there is a part of you who never, ever, takes you seriously. And sometimes, when you have the courage to want to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, that voice comes back again, only to sigh “oh, it’s you again.”
And for Gary to summarize an agonizing feeling in such few words was, at first, a hard jab. I felt it right away. I was like yo, this guy is coming for me too. But I couldn’t run away from the truth. What Gary said was true and it felt true. Even if I didn’t want to believe it at the moment, a part of me knew that I had been caught, this time for good.
He reminded me and that fellow that it’s unfair to hold your goals to a time limit. By limiting the goal to a deadline, you suck away all the creativity from the process. You get stuck in a rut and you don’t get to find out until you have gone weary and tired of pushing against an invisible wall, of which you could have avoided had you searched for a door.
You hold yourself, hostage, always looking at the clock to find out if you have become successful yet. [Imagine how many ticks you would have to go through in order to see that reality.] You might even forget the initial motivating reason that got you on the journey in the first place.
