Why 95% of People Abandon their Dreams

When was the last time you chose to learn something new?

Maybe a new skill, hobby or job?

You visualised all these amazing things you’d be able to do when you get really good.

You’d consult Youtube and see people in the videos living their best lives because they’ve figured out how to get from zero to 100 at lightspeed.

You’re super hyped to learn and experience as much as possible. You feel yourself climbing this ladder towards your dream destination.

But then after a few weeks you stop making progress:

• The ladder looks a lot higher than it seemed at the start

• The repetition is starting to get boring

• There’s more interesting or important things to do in Life

95% of people stop at this point because they aren’t seeing any results or positive feedback to indicate their efforts are worthwhile.

This point is called ‘The Grind’ and its what separates the top 5% of successful people from everyone else.

The Two Frogs in the Cream

Since training as a Life Coach helping people change their lives I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of the grind.

And I’ve come up against it myself whilst building a personal brand over the last 6 months.

The grind tends to come in waves for me but last week I was really starting to teeter on the edge of doubt.

Thats when a friend recommended I read a book called ‘The Slight Edge’ by Jeff Olson.

Its safe to say it pulled me right back to where I needed to be.

I want to share a fable with you that I learnt from it, its called “The Two Frogs in the Cream”.

Two hungry frogs come across half a bucket of cream and can’t believe their luck. They both dive in and start drinking the cream until their bellies are full. At this point they realise the bucket is too slippery for them to climb out and there’s nothing for them to push off to jump out.

They both panic over the predicament and frantically start thrashing to get out, but its no use.

One frog gives up there and then saying “this is pointless we’re doomed”, the other says “no way man I want to live! We just have to keep swimming and pray for a miracle.”

The first frog gives up and sinks to the bottom. But the second frog persists swimming round in circles for an hour before it eventually reaches exhaustion. He can’t swim anymore and lies back to sink. But he doesn’t sink…

Whilst lying suspended he feels his foot touch something hard.

He looks around and sees a solidified chunk of butter that he’d churned by swimming the cream round in circles with his little repetitive kicks. He climbs up the butter and jumps out of the bucket to freedom!

It’s a tale about perseverance and not giving up.

Even in seemingly impossible situations i.e when we don’t see any results to justify our efforts--

if we persist with the small repetitive actions over time we will achieve incredible success.

Hidden Benefits

Time is the most powerful force in the universe. If you do anything long enough you will be successful.

With consistent daily work you stop having to worry about when it will happen and just trust that it will happen eventually.

The biggest barrier to success is the societal addiction to instant gratification.

You only care about the shortcuts and are too impatient to stick to anything long enough to see results.

People would rather sacrifice their dreams than sacrifice their time.

6 months ago I started writing online from scratch and as of today I have 31 newsletter subscribers and about 280 followers on X.

I know on the surface this isn’t an achievement that’s going to gain me any credibility. Its not an attractive Headline or ‘Hook’ for a social media post.

But over the past 6 months I’ve gained more experience and learning than I could consciously be aware of.

By writing everyday and publishing every week I'm practicing my sword swing like a samurai. That dash move they do when slicing clean through people and then just stand with their back to them re-sheathing. Yes, thats what I'm training for.

If I stopped because the guy in the Youtube video said I should have a specific number of results by now, I’d be the first frog that said farewell and sank to the bottom.

So if you ever feel like you’re swimming in circles and nothing is happening just keep going!

Its not going to feel good all the time.

You’re not going to get any results for a long time.

If you believe in overnight success then you are blocking yourself from the consistency and persistence that it takes for time to compound tiny repetitive actions.

6 Tips to Pass The GateWay of Grind

1)Compounding and Consistency

In ‘The Slight Edge’, Jeff Olson talks about how it’s the small consistent daily actions compounded over time that lead to the quantum leaps we see.

Imagine if The Grand Canyon suddenly appeared overnight…

People would probably lose their minds over the immensity of power to cause this massive slash in the ground- SuperHeroes? Aliens? God?..

But people rarely stop to consider how something as mundane as water. Water flowing consistently over rock for a very long time causes one of the wonders of the world.

The reason you don’t achieve greatness is because you keep interrupting the consistent flow of simple actions over time.

2)Beware Simplicity

Each day you make multiple decisions that determine your long term future outcome.

Suppose you are trying to improve your life and you commit to reading 10 pages of a self-improvement book every day before bed.

This is a pretty simple action to do. However...

Each individual 10 page session isn’t going to turn you into MegaMind overnight.

And missing a night won’t make any significant difference to your progress either.

So its also simple to just not do it, there’s no short term consequences, so you enter the slippery slope of thinking it doesn’t matter.

This is the trap 95% of people fall into.

If you simply read 10 pages every single day, in a year you will have read 10 life changing books.

So when you’re confronted with the decision of whether or not to do the simple action,  think about the consequences next year rather than the consequences tomorrow.  

3)Have a Compelling Vision

You have to know exactly what you want to achieve and then create a vision that you’re passionate about.

You need to really feel in your heart and soul everything that you will experience when you’ve achieved the dream.

Write it down somewhere, draw it out, make a video or voice note talking about it. Do whatever you need to do to immortalise it in your consciousness.

You want to access it everyday as a reminder of that passion.

This will give you:

• The burning desire to smash through any obstacles in your way

• The ability to see opportunities that others will miss.

• Something bigger than yourself to believe in, an unshakeable faith that you will make it!

4)Utilise the power of Habit and Automation

Habits are the things we do automatically without having to think about. They save our brains energy.

We end up in trouble because a lot of Bad habits operate freely below our awareness. This makes them very difficult to remove.

The solution is to replace Bad habits with Good habits

By consciously repeating good habits they will replace the bad habit loop in your brain and become automatic.

5)Utilise the power of Positivity to handle set backs

Having a positive mindset doesn’t mean that nothing bad happens to you and you’re just constantly happy.

Life is Life, shit happens and it can be a lot sometimes especially if you’re in the grind as well.

Having a positive mindset is:

1. An awareness that current circumstances are negatively impacting your emotions.

2. Optimism that circumstances can improve, therefore the negative emotions don’t hold you down for very long.

3. Focusing only on things within your power to control and channeling activity into them.

This allows you to bounce back to feeling positive emotion again.

Having a positive mindset is an essential part of navigating the journey to success.

6)Mentors

Mentors are people who have already achieved the goal that you’re aiming for. They are where your trying to get to.

They can give you a map to guide you through all of the common obstacles that they have already overcome.

The beauty of mentors is you don’t have to meet them personally.

People who are successful tend to write books or create courses specifically designed to help people they know will benefit from their experiences.

Find a mentor in person or find a group of mentors by reading their books.

7)Master minds

Masterminds are a concept that involves joining together with a small group of individuals who have the same goal as you.

The result of the combination of multiple minds is an entirely different new mind.

Its like when the power rangers form their Megazord out of their individual Zords, allowing them to take on a much larger and more powerful enemy.

Create your own mastermind group by connecting authentically with people online. This way there is no problem too big for the group to take on.

Summary

• 95% will stop on the path to success because they believe quantum leaps are the only way to get there.

• The Grind is the point at which actions necessary to produce meaningful change become boring, stressful and tiresome.

• Passing through The GateWay of Grind is essential to longterm success.

Remember its the simple, small, mundane actions repeated consistently over time that create Hidden power.

You won’t see it for a long time but once unleashed the result appears to be an overnight success.

Thats all for now

Lewis

P.S

If you’d like to be part of the mastermind I’m creating called ‘The Megazord’ dm me to discuss details!

Feel free to comment or reach out to me via X, Linked-In or IG.

I help Introverted Doctors Escape Career Stagnation by being True to Themselves.

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