"Tell Me How You Did It?"
The above question gets hurled in my direction quite often. To start with, I love questions! I am constantly wondering about things and posit all manner of inquiries both to myself and others on a daily basis. Genuine inquiry out of wonderment is one of the most fantastic things about being a human, for we can seek out the answers to our questions through a multitude of different thought-deavors!
The specific type of inquiry that I am speaking of is the, "You did all the hard work to figure it out, now tell me your secret so I can achieve just what you did without all the sacrifice and effort." type of question. I'm reasonably sure that anyone that is doing quite well at anything has been asked how they've got there by people.
Recently, I was having a conversation with a dear friend and he expressed a desire to live a healthier life. I began with telling him that my success with any change starts with reasonable goal setting and a serious commitment to the achievement of that goal or goals. There is no room for a lack of impulse control when one is trying to accomplish something big, and if you are not ready to put the work in, you are just deluding yourself as to your desire to actually change. Rather, you are just coveting someone else's success or not ready for the journey. Being honest about your motives is one of the most important steps to change.
As the conversation progressed it became clear that he wanted me to help him by just telling him what I did. The thing is, what works for one person might not exactly work for another. Not to mention the fact that I'm a big believer of having some skin in the game when it comes to accomplishing goals. Why? Because if you don't have to put the work into whatever it is you are trying to achieve, then chances are you are not going to appreciate your result.
Take my Steemit blog for instance. I am pretty sure that my first post made a penny. Was I despondent about that? Heck no! Someone had paid me for my work, it was one of the most reaffirming moments of my life. Steemit, like any other worthwhile endeavor is all about the work your put into it. I spent countless hours writing, learning to format my posts, interacting with other Steemians, reading countless posts to figure out how to do things, experimenting with content to develop my shtick, and tons of other tasks. There have been frustrating days, disappointing days, and exciting success days. I absolutely love the challenge of it all!
So, when someone comes along and just blurts out: "Tell me how you did what you did so I can do it too." I bristle a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love to help people, and have no problems sharing my knowledge to help those that are seeking to grow and develop, but I am kind of over the whole instant gratification crowd.
Yes, I have lost a ton of weight and kept it off for years, but it took me an entire lifetime of not feeling well and a drive and desire to discover how to feel well, not to mention a ton of work! Yes, I earn a bit of money off the Interwebs from writing, but it took me a ton of time, work, and investigation to get to this point. And yes, I love to help people grow and succeed, but from now on if people want my insight to just help them bypass the important part of succeeding at anything, well, welcome to the obstruction!!
So, in the name of personal growth, I am going to make a change too. One of my personal struggles is enabling the people that I love by doing a lot of the work for them. I truly desire for people to thrive and succeed. Where I need to change things up on the personal level is to do better differentiating between helping and enabling. My natural impulse when asked by someone for help is to give it freely. From now on I am going to take a mini-pause and reflect whether the help I am about to give is going to empower a person or enable them.
And now I am off to do a Mind Enhanced Dance, which is totally a thing, and has nothing to do with all of the coffee I have consumed this morning! Hope you all have a fantastic Sunday!
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's tired of being used iPhone.