How to Build a Sky Scraper

Rome wasn't built over night.  Anything worth pursuing in life requires vision, purpose and perseverance to come to fruition.  Perseverance can be very difficult in practice because of the sheer amount of time that it actually takes to build something.  Here are a few thoughts on perseverance:

1) Small wins are the bricks that build a house. The overarching vision of what the house will look like is important, but equally important is to write down, execute and celebrate the small wins.  Enough small wins will stack on top of each other to build a sky scraper. 

2)  Success is a journey, not a destination, so learn to enjoy and celebrate the building process.  If our only moment of happiness comes when our vision complete, we are missing out on so much that life has to offer.

3) The two enemies of progress are discouragement and stagnation.  Both are symptoms of extended periods of time without a win.  Make a point to stack a minimum of one small win per day to avoid this dangerous trap. 

I spent this weekend at one of our large pine straw tracts that we have been improving and building for over a year.  We always say that every time we go down there it should look better than the last time.  In other words, there should be at least one more win than the last time.  This weekend I was blown away when I made a point to stop and reflect on how far we have actually come.   Although we have a long way to go until the skyscraper is built, it is exciting to watch as it goes up, brick by brick.