How long will it take for your dream to come true?

I know how long it will take for your dream to come true.

Regardless of what sort of dream you are chasing.

Whether you want to write a book, start a business, fall in love, travel the world, or get your Master’s Degree.

Want to know how long it’s going to take for your dream to come true?

Longer than you want.

If I had burned incense, and perhaps added a crystal ball to the design of this blog, I might be able to make some money as a fortune teller.

But it’s true. Your dream is going to take longer than you want it to.

Despite the simplicity of my prediction, we often forget that elementary truth. I was reminded of that the other day when someone emailed me a question. Here’s what they said:

“Woke up at 4:30AM. Worked on my dream. Drove to day job. Still didn’t feel any better about the ‘cube.’ Got any other advice? Thnx.”

First of all, hats off to that person. By getting up early and actually working on their dream before their day job, they have joined a slim, slim minority of people. I applaud the hustle.

But that question exposes a problem that I struggle with and you might wrestle with it too.

Impatience. We are dangerously impatient when it comes to our dreams. We try something for day and it doesn’t work. We try something for a weekend and it doesn’t work. We try something even for a week and it doesn’t work. So what do we do? We seek “other advice.” Something different, something new, something other.

That’s why impatience tends to kill more dreams than failure. More dreams are shipwrecked by distractions, frustrations and shiny object syndrome than failure.

The weird thing is that we don’t act that way in other areas of our lives.

No one would ever say, “I ran this morning for the first time in 12 years. I don’t feel ready to qualify for a marathon. I’ve been doing this training plan for a whole day, and it didn’t work. Do you have any other ideas?”

No one would ever say, “I went on a first date yesterday with a guy I just met. He didn’t propose yet. Do you have any other guys I can go on dates with?”

No one would ever say, “I took my first class in Mandarin Chinese today. I tried all day and wasn’t fluent that night. Do you have any other classes I can take?”

No one would say those things because we’d all think they’re crazy. But that’s what impatience makes you. And it comes in all shapes and sizes. Lately, I’ve felt an extreme self-imposed pressure to figure out what I’m doing with my writing career. As I fumbled about describing all the moving pieces, my wife smiled at me and said, “Remind me how long you’ve been writing business books? Your first one came out last May, so you’ve been at it for a whole 9 months. Wow! You’re right, it is taking entirely too long for the things you want to happen to take shape.”

Then I laughed at how foolish we were being, and I proceeded to vacuum because I’m an amazing husband.

OK, the vacuum part didn’t happen, but the impatience did. And I hope the next time you feel impatient with your dream, you’ll give it another day or another week or maybe even another year.

Don’t let a single day’s feelings be your boss. Get up every day and hustle on your dream for 90 days in a row and then let’s talk.

Flash-in-the-pan dreams fade quickly.

And that’s not what we’re aiming at. We’re building multi-generational, decade-long, world-changing dreams.

Question:
Have you ever been impatient with the progress of your dream?