Leap Towards Your Dreams

This year you are getting a whole extra day of life.

A free gift from the universe.

(Or actually, from Julius Caesar, if we’re going to get technical.)

So what are you going to do with your extra day?

The thought of having an extra day and all the possible ways to fill it, reminded me of the idea introduced by Matthew Kelly, in his book The Long View. Kelly points out that we overestimate what we can do in the short term, while vastly underestimating what we can do in the long term.

We all tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a day. The hours go faster than we expect, and we find ourselves at the end of the day with more to do than we got done. Progress feels slow and difficult. And this leads us to think that we aren’t really getting anywhere.

Our brain notices this. And then starts to extrapolate: If progress is impossible to detect in the little daily things, how are we ever going to make the big thing happen?

Our finite-focused, human brains have a hard time understanding the power of compounding and we end up greatly underestimating what we can create and accomplish over a year or decade. We completely discount what can happen as action accumulates over time—and then we give up before we start.

But you can be on to your brain.

Start thinking in terms of behaviors instead of results. Instead of noticing how you don’t have the result you want, ask yourself, “What are the things I need to DO every day, that will accumulate into a result over time?”

Because the result you want is not an event.

It is just an accumulation of actions.

And this year, you get one more day to add to the pile!

xo,

April

P.S. Too many people think it’s just too late to go after their dreams. If you want to stop underestimating what you can accomplish over time, sign up for a free coaching session  and I’ll show you how it is only this thought is keeping you from what’s possible.