You Can’t Create Something Amazing if You Hate Creating It

Do you enjoy the process?

This question has stuck with me from yesterday’s free November coaching call. Sometimes we want to have things and be things, but we aren’t enjoying what it takes to get there.

If you want to have ripped 6-pack abs – do you enjoy the workouts and the food and the focus required to get them? If you don’t think mixing protein shakes and spending a lot of time working out is fun, then you want the end result, but you don’t want the process. But if you love pushing yourself and watching the development, you may really love this.

You can’t get the end result without wanting the process and unless you decide you are ready for a lot of strain and force and misery and deprivation. That is a horrible way to build a business or write a book or live your life. Not a great strategic plan.

And getting the end result may never happen if the end result is something creative. Reaching the level of success you want when you are miserably slogging through every day will not have you at your most creative or productive. You’ll miss the opportunities that were there for you in your misery. You won’t have the excitement to share with others what you can offer.

So does that mean give up?

No! It means there are two things to look at.

First, make sure you really want what you think you want? Have you adjusted your dream because it seems like the only “reasonable way” to make things work? Have you watered it down because someone told you that you had to? I was working on starting a kids travel business last year. I had a business mentor who kept trying to bring me down to earth and had me put a whole line of products into my business plan that I knew would be great. But I had no desire to create them. It sounded tedious and boring. And I was so uninspired to create them that I couldn’t even get excited about finding or hiring someone else to create them. Ugh. It made me hate the whole business idea and it went nowhere.

If you know what you want is the right thing, then take a look at your thoughts around the process. What part doesn’t sound fun? I heard so many horror stories from entrepreneurs about fighting with the technical aspects of building a website, that i put it off for a really long time. Finally, i asked a friend who is a website wizard to get me started. She built the shell of it and I took it from there. I have been having all sorts of fun with it since then. But accepting it is not everything in my head yet and building as I go, was something i had decide was part of the fun.

Learning and trying and growing with a mindset that is curious and playing is all sorts of fun. If you are only focused on the end result though, you may feel like it’s all struggle and failure. Perfectionists often find they struggle with this. They have their perfect vision and anything other than having it done a perfectly – is just frustration. And then nothing gets done.

Can you shift your mind into the thought process of an entrepreneur or a scientist and find the wonder in the process?

“Let’s try this and see how it goes? If it doesn’t work, what do I tweak before I try again?”

If you can, then you will be able to create whatever you envision. Because if you enjoy the process, the end result is the inevitable end of the journey. You just don’t stop til you get there.