What’s an obstacle you used to think was torture but now is a piece of cake?

We often suffer more in our imagination than in reality. Our mind plays tricks on us. Its goal is self-preservation. The mind wants to protect not just our physical self, but our ego and emotional state. We aren’t wired to do hard things, but often things are hard only in how we perceive them.

People make the mistake of thinking their big, hairy, audacious goals will be simple and easy. Twelve months ago, I remember having doubts about whether I’d ever hit my revenue goals and whether I should pack it in and get a job. It reached the point where I even showed up for a job interview and was offered the job on the spot… It would have been fewer hours and more pay than I was bringing home in my business’s infancy. At the time, I didn’t know how much more rejection, frustration, and uncertainty I could take, plus my runway was shrinking. It was scary.

I left the job interview feeling disgusted. You can’t be half-pregnant. You’re either all in or all out. The decision was simple. Either give up on my dreams, quit my business, and regret it forever. Or, confront the brutal facts of my current reality with faith that eventually the investment would pay off.

Full. Sends. Only.

Now, 12 months later, I’m still in a massive amount of self-imposed mental suffering. Except now I’ve got 12 months of evidence that I can do hard things, like growing a business with my own two hands on my dime without a safety net. Look backward, but only to see how far you’ve come.

Oh yeah, and now, when I look at my revenue compared to then, I’m doing 8x more in sales, have hired 6 people this month alone, and will pay more in quarterly taxes than what I did last year in monthly sales.

Success and failure are both hard, but they’re also simple. You start with a decision, and regardless of how you feel, you commit to it.

The next time you feel like giving up, wait 12 months.

You cannot lose if you do not quit.

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”