If you’re worried about making it pay off, it won’t pay off. If you’re consumed with the fear that you’re wasting your time, then you are indeed wasting your time.
When you try to force your efforts to get results, you end up pushing those results away. Why is that? It’s simple. By very definition, whatever you need, you don’t have. So when you put your energy into needing, you are directing your energy away from having. By desperately needing a particular outcome, you’re practically guaranteeing that you do not achieve that outcome.
So how do you get beyond the need to need? How to you direct your focus away from the fear of failure?
Begin with gratitude. Be thankful and downright thrilled for the opportunity to be in the moment and to be doing what you’re doing. Instead of wishing and hoping and needing some particular outcome, celebrate the experience of making something happen, whatever that something turns out to be.
Then, focus on your performance and execution, and on the rhythm and flow of what you’re doing. Concern yourself with doing your very best in each moment, and allow yourself to feel the fulfillment that the effort itself brings. Consider how miraculous and amazing it is that you can express yourself and make a difference. The outcome is in a future that does not exist, so right now that outcome really has no meaning. What does have meaning is the experience of living and the experience of this part of your journey.
By all means, live with the very highest of intentions and expectations. But don’t let yourself be pulled down by need and desperation. Find real joy and fulfillment right where you are, for that’s precisely what will ensure that you get where you have chosen to go.
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