I’m going to start with a story. I mentor my niece, and she had set a goal to do pull ups. When she started out she could do 3 pull ups. And in a matter of 4 months, she could then do 10 pull ups. You guys–10 pull ups! She increased her amount of pull ups so quickly and did so amazing. I was super, super impressed. Now let me tell you about another girl who tried to do pull downs at the pull-down machine at the rec center. It’s me. I think I started at 45 pounds, which isn’t even close to my weight. Not even close to doing a pull up, right? It’s a pull down. I wanted to do pull ups too, but since I couldn’t do any, I sat at this machine and pulled the bar down to try to mimic a pull up. Well, after a matter of 2 years, I increased the weight by 15 pounds. I could then do a pull up at, let’s see, 60 pounds. After 2 years. That’s pretty good. I increased. I got better. 

Now, normally you would think that my natural reaction to helping her with this goal, I would be a little jealous, and think, “What’s the deal? In 4 months she could increase so much and make so much progress,” and just feel defeated. I’d feel defeated. Like, how can she increase so much more and be so much more capable than I am in 4 months and I only increase a tiny bit in 2 years? Now, the normal reaction would be to be jealous, or to wonder “What’s wrong with me?” It wouldn’t be a positive reaction, right?. 

However, because I knew that I was doing the 3 tips that I’m going to tell you about, I was confident and comfortable in knowing that I was doing what I was willing to do. I was spending the time I was willing to spend, and I was incrementally getting better. And I was okay with that. I could be okay because I knew I was working on it, and I know this one key thing: direction is more important than location. If we were on a ladder of competition she would be way up above, and I’d be way down low. If we were competing. But we’re not. We’re on the same ladder. We have the same goal. And you know what’s important? It doesn’t matter where we are on the ladder. But, it matters that we’re moving forward and making progress individually. 

We’re competing against ourselves, not others. That’s what’s important. I could see that I was making progress and I was happy about that, and I could see that she was making progress and I was happy about that, too. Because I know that direction is more important than location.  I  was going in the right direction because I knew these three tips. So, what are the tips? I know you’re just dying to know.

The first tip is see where you want to go. What do you want? What’s your goal? You have to see where you want to go. I knew that I wanted to eventually someday do a pull up, and my niece knew that she wanted to improve her pull ups. We could see our goal. Tip number two is move your ideas to paper. When you have an idea of a goal, and you want to do it, put it on a piece of paper. Write it down. An extra step to that is to tell someone about it. Get it out of your head, that’s tip number two. Tip number three is that as you are writing it down, you are thinking. Think about ways you can reach the goal. What’s something that you can do to reach your goal today? And then the next day? What’s something I can do to get better and reach my goal each day? 

So the tips are: see, move, act. See where you want to go, move that information onto paper, and then act. Act on reaching your goal. You’re going to be so happy when you make progress and when you see your goal and you have it written down and you’re acting on it. It really doesn’t matter how far behind you feel from other people, or how far ahead you think other people are. You’re not going to feel behind. You’re not going to get discouraged, because you’re going to see progress. Because you’re seeing your goal. You’re moving in that direction and you’re acting.

Isn’t it amazing that I could celebrate along with someone even when they were so far ahead of me? It was amazing. It felt so good to not have any jealousy, not feel down on myself, not wonder what’s wrong with me because I wasn’t where she was and I wasn’t making progress as quickly as she was. It was okay by me because I had seen what I wanted. I wrote it down on paper–moved it out of my head and put it on paper. And I was acting on it. I felt confident that I was moving in the right direction because direction is more important than location.