Development – It’s a Process

This morning I’m taking 5 minutes to reflect on reflection. This is something I don’t do often enough, and it is essential to growth and well being. It’s essential to business persistence and clarity.

But my inspiration comes in the form of my oldest daughter today. She reached a goal yesterday, and showed that even the tiniest bit of challenge and negative perspective can alter your future, which also shows how a persistence, even when not feeling positive, actually can also make a difference.

My daughter passed a gymnastics level for the first time in her “developmental” program, which is essentially a training program to prep her for the ‘big leagues’ of competition when she’s 9 (in a year or so), should she choose to. Like in business, but unlike in many other sports programs, reaching a big milestone can take a year or more. It takes a year of miniscule subtle improvements. The turn of a hip, the point of a toe, pushing the muscles for 2 seconds longer than the last time – all subtle successes, barely noticed. And these subtle successes, in many ways, deserve more applause than the ribbon she won and the approval to move onto the next level.

She overcame slight adversity to get to this point. She had a back injury that had me evaluating whether this was the best thing for her to be doing – particularly after hearing “I want to quit” throughout September and October. But, in spite of her outward attitude, her inner self persevered. I often asked her to think about why 12 hours a week of gymnastics training is special or important to her, even when it’s hard and even when it’s not a great day. Her answer? Because it’s mostly fun.

A-ha! Mostly fun. When you lose perspective that even a subtle success, or 5 minutes reflection matters, you can change the course of your history.

Development program. I like that. We are all living in a development program. It’s a process where the prize is reaching our dreams. But there are many subtle successes along the way. And if we can take 5 minutes to remember what the fun is, how we are succeeding in tiny ways every day, we are progressing. We’ll remember it’s fun.

Now take 5 minutes. And carry on with the process of fulfilling your dreams.