The windows were down, the music was up, and a brilliant sun was high in the sky on the way to a work happy hour tonight.
I don’t even drink anymore, and I was beyond jazzed as I’d just finished my first leadership conference as a new manager.
It felt especially cathartic because a year ago this week, I’d been reassigned at work for the second time in a year. My father had recently passed away, my mother was struggling with cancer treatment, and I had a brand-new infant son to worry about on top of all that. That’s some shit.
A couple months earlier, I’d been driving back from my father’s funeral when the steady tick-tock of my life suddenly seemed deafeningly loud.
Then two things happened. The first was my team at work had some folks leave, opening up an opportunity to work a highly visible sales territory. The second was signing up for #Ship30for30.
In the 343 days since those two activities began together, the conditions of my personal and professional life look drastically different for the better.
But it didn’t happen at once. It certainly didn’t happen on Day 1. It didn’t happen on Day 100.
The key is that I didn’t quit.
If something didn’t work, I tried something else. When something did work, I doubled down.
For the first time in my life, I began to apply myself. I learned discipline through daily writing. And through discipline I gained clarity and focus.
Brutal consistency became my new calling card, something that would have been unheard of a few years ago when Me 1.0 was still running around.
The point is this.
Those changes took time. And it took learning to forgive myself and be patient to finally find the freedom and courage to use what makes me best.
Don’t worry if you don’t figure out the change all at once.
Chances are you probably won’t. New versions of ourselves are kind of like software. Version 1.0 must go through a lot of iterations to get to 2.0, and so on.
Start iterating today.
We overestimate what we can accomplish in a day.
We underestimate what we can do in a year.
Today could be the first day of the best year of your life.
But will it be?
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