We can imagine a lot of things that are possible, maybe even relatively easier than most other people, for us. These can range from certain athletic abilities to different intellectual capabilities. We “imagine” that doing them would be possible so long as we put in the effort, however, we will never do that since we never have the time nor the need to do so. Sometimes, however, we do come across a situation where we have to perform the so-called imagined things as they are necessary for us to achieve our goal. Now we realize that the thing that we perceived to be easy, or at least possible, for us is actually a lot more demanding than we had originally estimated it to be. This remains true even if we had experience doing a similar thing in the past. The reason for that is because anything worth doing will be difficult to do, and the only way to do something that is hard is to work diligently on it. No matter at which state in life you are in, hard work will always be hard for you. It will always require sacrifice and perseverance from you.
Most of the people give up when they encounter this reality because they often have different options or different goals to pursue. Even if they think the current goal is the ideal, they will begin to assign more importance to the secondary or maybe even the tertiary goal once they encounter this wall. However, if your resolve is strong enough, which it should be for anything that you try to pursue in life as part of your goal, you will keep going forward and putting yourself under the pressure. Hard work will not become easier with time but you will get used to it. That is, its not like you will not think about giving up again and again but rather that you will get used to overcoming that feeling and keep up the grind. Its okay and expected that you will question yourself whenever things get tough. Therefore, hard work is more about your mental fortitude than any other kind of exhausting activity.
Here are the five most important things you should keep in mind the next time you encounter such an insurmountable wall that makes you doubt your own self and question the validity of your beliefs about yourself,
1) Its Okay To be Overwhelmed
Its is perfectly okay to be overwhelmed at first; you are not supposed to understand everything in the beginning. Whenever you try to work on something new, you try to understand what work would that entail for you so you can make changes to your life accordingly. The better the goal is, the more complicated process would appear to you at the beginning. When you will try to connect all the dots to make a road map for yourself, you will find yourself getting overwhelmed by all the things that you will need to do. This is a good thing and even if you do not know why, trust me that it is much better this way for you and the reward will be even more satisfying at the end.
The more overwhelming it appears at the beginning, the more people would get intimidated by it and give up before even trying. You just have to make sure that you do not give up by getting overwhelmed as it is not just you; everyone else will go through the same thing. The only difference is that most people will give up while you should embrace it and stay true to your efforts even if they be infinitesimal.
2) Always Keep Your Eye on the Prize
When you are overwhelmed but you still want to keep going, you should ask yourself what your final trial is i.e. what it is that you are trying to achieve by putting in the effort? Your efforts should not be applied just for the sake of working hard, but they should be directed to achieve a very specific task that you currently have at hand. For example, if you want to prepare for an essay, then all your effort should not be spent on reading good essays and collecting credible facts etc. Although they are helpful and definitely good for your success in this final trial, but it ignores what it is that you will be judged on at the end. You can have the most wonderful arguments in mind with all the supporting evidence but if you are not able to write it within the specified amount of time, you will be unsuccessful at what you set out to do. So, focusing on writing first and foremost, and then adding better arguments and facts to it as you improve will be the better option.
Focus on what you have set out to do and try to achieve that. You are overwhelmed because you want to control too many things at once. Slow down and focus on what is really important to your goal and nothing else.
3) Plan to Complete The Race, Even if You have to Take All The Shortcuts
If you have a clear eye on the prize, then you know what it is that you are trying to achieve at the end. However, that can still leave you with a lot of things to do in a short amount of time as just realizing what more important does not mean we can just leave the relatively less significant parts completely. Nor does it mean that the most important thing would actually be any easier for you. In such situations, you priority is to divide your attention according to the importance of your end-goal and try to go through everything once, even if it be only a cursory look. If, for example, writing an essay is the end-goal, then instead of trying to have enough information in your mind to write every possible essay, try to pick just one and practice your writing skills first. Once you have written one proper essay, you can begin collecting data for another and repeat the process again and again.
What you will notice is that not only does this sharpens the skills you need the most for your current goal, but it also gives you a boost of confidence in your ability to overcome this overwhelming wall with each iteration.
4) Have Tangible Goals With Deadlines
Instead of trying to to your best and hoping for the best, try to set up goals(sub-goals of your main goal) with specific things to do in specific amount of time. It is always better to have much smaller goals than what you currently think are possible for you, and then try to outdo, or at least achieve, them consistently rather than aiming high and failing regularly. To summarize, you are more likely to travel from point A to point B daily rather than trying to set out from point A and going as far as possible each day. In case of latter, most of the days you will not even be able to set out from point A, let alone reach a point ahead of B.
5) Do Not Let Others Experience Get You Down
Everyone will have their own thoughts and beliefs about what works and what doesn’t work for achieving your goal. Some people will have already reached the goal that you are aiming for and some will be much farther ahead than you in doing so. Some might not have anything to do with your goal but would still offer you some advice. It is important to understand that everyone experiences things differently based on who they are and they define what works and what doesn’t work for them based on their own experiences. You should not let yourself get discouraged and feel insecure about your own efforts by hearing someone else’s advice. Most of the times, the advice people give is not meant to discourage you but it comes from the perspective of someone who is no longer at the same level as you are. So, you should take the advice and incorporate what you can from it to your own efforts, but you should never let it diminish your own efforts, and feel inferiority complex about your own experiences. To put it simply, if you see someone with plump, round and red cheeks(signifying youthfulness), then you should not slap your face to make it red as well.
