I saw this chart on LinkedIn, so I decided to rip it off and put it here.
Although it’s small, I hope you can get the notion.
I’ve personally experienced this journey a number of times, and many of my friends and clients have too.
They say it takes decades to become an overnight success, and this shows you how it happens.
It’s hard not to fall in love with your own ideas.
If they are particularly lovable, you might even be so bold to pursue them with and enthusiasm vigor.
At the front end of the process, you know it’s gonna be great, and it’s only a matter of you doing what you set out to do.
Then, depending on the scale of your task, some weeks, months, or even years later, unless for whatever reason the jigsaw has somehow fallen into place, you likely find yourself in that awful swamp.
Weeks, months, years of pounding away, and things haven’t worked out as you once hoped or dreamed.
Many people would have quit a long time ago, but even though your great project isn’t looking so great, you persist.
You keep going in spite of your lack of progress. You keep going despite other people questioning you. You keep going no matter how many times you question yourself.
And then, perhaps if you’re lucky or good or for some other reason, things start to turn.
A small win here or there, and you begin to look out at the world a little bit differently.
You start to remember way back to when you began your project just how certain you were, and start to feel some of that coming back.
And then it just keeps growing, and growing, to the point where other people start talking about how great you are.
You know it’s not true. You know you’re no greater than anyone else.
You know that this thing that today is great, and many weeks, months, and years ago you thought would be great, could just as easily have been abandoned every step along the way.
You smile with your achievement, cry with your humility, and just get on with it.