Reflecting on Accomplishment

1) The Gurus Have it Wrong

There are endless professionals touting books, courses, and lectures romanticizing the concept of becoming the best self-loving “you”.

Improve yourself, love yourself, glow yourself.

This idea becomes most appealing when you garner the motivation to pursue a big life change (such as meeting a business goal) which requires you to be more.

And when you decide to change, people (often the ones closest to you) will have strong, dissenting opinions:

• If you want to build a family, it requires a spouse.
• If you want to sell a product, it requires buyers.
• If you want to teach, it requires students.
• If you want to learn, it requires a teacher.
• If you want to be loved, it requires relationship.
• If you want to love yourself, it requires accomplishment.

The pursuit, in my opinion, needs to shift. It’s not about how much you love yourself, it’s about doing something worth loving and reflecting on that experience.

Interacting with other people, pouring into them, learning from them, and observing them on your path to what is better.

2) The Story

When I started my second company, we were bringing new life to an industry that had been stagnant.

We grew fast and attracted a lot of attention.

With that growth and attention came a group of people seemingly hell-bent on destroying everything I was building.

They spent so much time spreading hate about me and my company it wreaked havoc on the dreams I was tirelessly perusing. It was painful.

It didn’t make sense to me, the things they hated so vocally had no real validity.

Sometimes I got things wrong. They were sure to promote those failures, but that isn’t where it stopped.

I would lay awake at night wondering if what we were doing was worth it.

If these people can so loudly proclaim how wrong we were, maybe they were right?

I never did stop though, because what we were doing was working and our growing list of customers were happy.

An interesting thing happened. A few years into business, I attended an event one year with most of these dissenters.

After meeting most of them and talking in person, most stopped the criticism, a few apologized and some even become our biggest supporters.

3) The Point

If you decide to pursue change for the better, or want to become more than you have been, it will be harder in more ways than you can imagine, and it's good.

If you can:

• Stick to your gut and remember your why
  
  
• Acknowledge the trials but set them aside for reflection
  
  
• Take every interaction as a chance to learn
  
  
• Stay honest and genuine
  

You will end up looking back at your old goals realizing you surpassed them.

With reflection on accomplishment comes the ability to love and appreciate the person God created you to be.

- DH

Originally published and sent as my newsletter on Feb 12th, 2024.

Credits:
Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash