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Believe in Your Dreams and Believe in Yourself

Rome was not built in a day. Like the Romans, you are creating something that will take incredible amounts of time and effort. You are working on yourself. Making you a smarter, stronger, wiser, healthier, more loving, believing, hard working, patient, and understanding person takes time. You absolutely can improve yourself in a day. You absolutely cannot create your ultimate desired outcome for yourself in a day.

As I've said in plenty of previous posts, kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that essentially means small, daily improvements. It is a way of life, not a quick fix. If you want to be all that you can be ... If you want to maximize your life, than you must plan and follow through over decades! Baby steps is the simple answer to creating the best you.

My favorite analogy to improving yourself is, oddly enough, like learning to drive a car with a manual transmission. I'm a stickshift fan.

Soon, this analogy won't be relevant, because it seems that the manual transmission is becoming extinct. For now, I will stick (no pun intended) with my story...

Assuming you know how to drive a stick ... These days, it is basically second nature for you to shift gears. We can easily drink coffee, listen to the radio, think about work, think about family, hold a conversation with the passenger(s), and simply switch from first to second gear without any hesitation or actual thought.

However, it was not always so easy. As a matter of fact, if you're honest with yourself, it was downright tough as nails to drive a stick-shift car when you first started out. Close your eyes for a moment and gradually slip back in time to your very first day in the driver's seat of a vehicle with a manual transmission. During that very first experience, you were learning and you couldn't do any of things we listed above. Not only could you not do them, you had to concentrate and focus completely on switching gears and switching gears alone.

Nervously, you gripped the wheel and struggled along. When it was time to change from first to second, you adjusted your hands shakily on the steering wheel so that the right hand was off the wheel and had access to stick shift. From there, you eased your foot off the gas while slowly pressing the clutch in with the other foot. Once that tedious part was done, you gripped the shift knob as sweat started to form on your forehead. Pulling the lever with just enough force, you popped the transmission out of first gear and into neutral momentarily. Finally, you kept pressure on the shifter, sliding it carefully into second gear. As if all of that wasn't enough, now you had to time smoothly pulling the clutch back out while applying gas incrementally.

Do you remember that first time? Getting your stick-shift cherry popped?? Wasn't it kind of like that?

Even after that first time, we still had to practice this carefully for hours, days, weeks, or even months before we perfected it enough to feel comfortable. Small gains and improvements were made over time before we could finally switch gears without thinking about it. Over time muscle memory took over and we were finally able to do it without a second thought. These days, you don't even think about the entire process and can juggle in a bunch of additional tasks. Heck I wrote this blog article while driving a stick-shift, eating an Egg McMuffin, and singing along with the tunes jamming out of my stereo ... Ok, I made that part up, and I would never condone blogging while driving ... But, you get my point!

Improving ourselves is done much in the same way. When we first dabble into an improvement, it often feels foreign and impossible to accomplish. However, with determination and drive you quickly get past that feeling and over time you create a desired result that feels like second nature today.

Remember to carefully choose your improvements. Then, draw out goals along the way to achieve your dreams. The last piece of the puzzle is to not only stay focused on your dreams, but to dig deep inside yourself and find the willpower to follow through!

Nothing is impossible to a person who believes in their dreams and believes in themselves.

Dream it! Write it! Plan it! Do it!
(I'll let you in on a little secret ... "It" can be anything ... The sky is the limit)

Your daily dose of inspiration was brought to you by,
Mr. V

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