What Have You Done

The words by Dave Trott, “Forget what you haven’t done. It’s what you have done that matters.” are the focus of this week’s message. Too often as a society we focus on achievement with a negative perspective rooted in a black and white mindset of succeed or fail. Instead we should be taking positive perspective based on growth. We can do this in two ways.

First, if we set our goals just out of reach and fall short, its important to realize how much the action of honest, hard effort has improved us overall. This can be done by looking back at where we were when we started and comparing it to where we are at the end. Even if we haven’t hit the mark we have improved more than we would have if we didn’t try.

Second, we need to realize that success isn’t a matter of a straight line. Instead, it is a series of backward steps, slow progress, and at times outright failure. The actual goal is to make sure that we are continuously improving in the face of these hardships. That is where true success comes from.

Embracing this mindset and taking these two mindsets will also have the benefit of loftier goals. Getting hung up on success or failure often scares people into creating goals that they already know they can reach. That’s akin to congratulating yourself for finishing your lunch! If you can already do it than what’s the point of making it a goal? All higher level success comes with some degree of fear because you have to reach higher than you thought possible if you are going to reach your dreams. They are called dreams because their attainment is uncertain. If however, we change our perspective by focusing on growth, the fear is overshadowed by sustained effort. If the effort falls short we end up much closer to our ultimate success than if we hadn’t tried. That’s what need to be celebrated.

I explain more in the four minute video below. I would love to hear your reaction or thoughts here or on my YouTube page. I also invite you to hit subscribe here and on YouTube for more posts like this!