If one looks too far ahead, he or she might stumble over something right in front of his or her feet. Of course I am not talking about walking when I say that it is easy to become detracted by one's ultimate "destination." Our primary goals can blind us to the path we must travel to reach them. When we become too focused on the things that we really want, we may ignore the tasks that are necessary to obtain them. This leads to failure and, since we didn't get something that is important to us, we can become discouraged or give up on our dreams prematurely. I believe that if one hopes to become successful in anything, he or she needs to take a series of steps to achieve that success. There are little victories that must be won if the campaign is to be fruitful and if, in the process, we suffer a defeat, it is a trivial one and we can easily recover from it. To put it simply, it is best to keep our goals small and manageable while we work toward our main objective.
If you are reading this, you are almost certainly a fellow Steemian (hello and welcome to my blog, by the way) which means you probably have some Steemit goals just like I do. I know that we all hope that "this is going to be the big one" when we click the post button. That is fine, without a doubt, but it is important to be realistic. If I set out to earn "new car money" every time I write, I will always be disappointed (unless this post turns out to be the big one, that is). Over time, constant disappointment builds, erodes our motivation, and makes us more likely to abandon our dreams before we actually need to make that decision. If one comes here, expecting to earn a living on day one and tries to earn that living for a few weeks before giving up, he or she may be cutting and running too early. If, on the other hand, this person first sets the goal of earning one SBD on a post, he or she can realistically achieve this in his or her foreseeable future which may lead this person to stick around longer, thus increasing his or her chance at the desired success. The need to be realistic about one's goals goes far beyond Steemit too. The same thing happens to people regardless of what ultimate object of desire might be. Sometimes, it is a hobby that seems too hard to master, so the would be hobbyist ignores his or her small improvements and quits. It can affect more important things. Maybe, a person gives up on an excellent career because the person has not progressed as far as he or she thinks that he or she should have. It doesn't matter where the "end" lies, by focusing on it too intently, we actually harm our chances of reaching it.
The solution is both simple and rewarding. One can determine which steps he or she needs to take and work toward them one at a time. If you hope to earn a college degree, for example, it can be overwhelming to worry about your entire degree plan but only thinking about one semester or even one class at a time can change your view of things. It is no longer whole long list of tasks which you must contend with and the small goals become easier to manage in your mind even though there is no change in the process that you must go through to reach the primary goal. Obviously his can be applied to other things as well. Working in this way can be quite pleasurable too. Gratification is not delayed because we learn to take joy from our small achievements. We may want to be rich one day but we can keep ourselves going, if we learn how to feel good about earning a little bit of money right now. This may not be what everyone wants to hear but it is something that we can all make an effort to do and, I believe, it will lead to greater advancement for us in the long run.
Do I practice what I preach? I try to but I make no claims to perfection. There are definitely some things that I focus on too much, too early, to be sure, but I make efforts to not fall into this trap that waits for us on the road to success. As far as this site goes, instead of worrying about gaining financial freedom with my short essays and rambling blog posts, I have aimed a bit lower. As much as I would love to have 10,000 followers and 10,000 SP, that is not realistic at this point. Instead, there are three things that I think are both doable and worth working toward. I want to reach 500 SP. I still have more road ahead than behind but I think I can make it there and that amount isn't so large that getting it seems daunting. I hope to reach 1000 followers. I am pretty close to that number and I think I will get to it before too long. Finally (and this is the hard one, for me), I want to have a post earn over 100 SBD. I have come close once or twice but I never quite made it there.
I was just letting the words flow today and this became more about Steemit than I had intended. I suppose it is a good way to frame things here because we all use this site. However, this issue is far larger than this community. We are often capable of greater than we give ourselves credit for but most of those things require more time and effort than we would expect. We can reach many of our goals (not all, sadly) but we have to understand that there is a process to most accomplishments and we must be mindful of each of our steps. If we do not do that, we sabotage ourselves and bring about the failure that we fear.
Peace.
All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.