If the level of success and influence you’re after were easy to attain, it would be crowded at the top.

If all it took was determination and hard work then again, there would be scores of people waiting for you at the finish lines.

Throngs of successful doers who stuck it out and did what it took.

But the place you deserve to be…the place that you’re scared to dream about sometimes…the place that makes you blush when you picture yourself there…well, that’s going to take more than hard work.

It may seem like it will take a year of long nights, but it might actually take six months of short ones.

You might feel like it’s going to take you getting to a place where everything you touch is fulfilling and refreshing, but it might just require you to always be doing something worth doing.

It may seem like becoming a machine and exhibiting hyper-productivity during work hours is required, but it might take a purposeful and deliberate pace that intentionally ignores and slips on some things.

In short, I think the road to where you deserve to be is paved with the very lessons that tell you what’s needed in order to scale the mountain (if you’re open to seeing them).

Not a Dale Carnegie book or a workflow optimization course, bit rather an awareness and commitment to improvement that transforms you with each lesson.