Taking Time Out To Figure It Out (Read Time: 2 min.)

For the past three or four weeks, I've been getting used to the idea that Stay Strong premiere membership, at least as I've known it, is gone. It was a hard pill to swallow, not so much because it didn't jive but because I was so in love with the idea and, yet, so out of love with the results.

Having to say "This isn't working" on something that you absolutely adore is a hard thing. Having to admit, even to yourself, that what you're doing isn't reaching who you're trying to reach feels a lot like failure and, even though I know that failure is simply learning and results, so many fears and doubts came up for me.

"Did I not stick this thing through?"
"Should I have continued on and on and on until it took?"
"What will people think?"
"What will people say?"
"How am I going to rebuild from here?"

Every single question connected to fear, self-doubt, and failure crept in and, one by one, I had to come back to the real issue: it wasn't working.

Napolean Hill once said "Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do." I thought about that and, at first, I said, "Am I doing what most men do?"

Then I read some more Hill and he also said "Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times." The key here, and I'm learning this, is to know the difference between quitting and letting something go. When you quit, you give up. You retreat out of a buy-in to the fear that you can't accomplish what you desire to. When you let go, you acknowledge that something in your plan isn't work quite right. You accept the results and you go back to the drawing board and come up with new plans. It's not a retreat; it's an intreat. You're getting the answers you don't want and you're asking new questions.

And that's exactly what I'm doing. I know Stay Strong has its place in the world... and I'm asking new questions so that, soon, very soon, I'll see different results.