What to Do When Your Adventure Feels Like a Long, Hard Slog

Does it feel like your latest journey or adventure has turned into a slog through a muddy forest? Does it seem as though there’s more work than wonder, more trudging than triumph?

Maybe you feel like your particular adventure isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Perhaps you’re working towards a qualification – and it’s taking more time, more money or more energy than you bargained for. Perhaps you’re aiming for glory as a best-selling novelist, a six-figure-earning blogger, a renowned artist or a world-famous musician: but, at the moment, you’re a complete unknown, practicing your craft daily.

You’re trying to live your passion, or to do something life-changing – and all the personal development gurus are telling you it should feel great. (Even I’ve told you it should feel great.)

It doesn’t. It feels, at times, like you’re walking more and more slowly, in the wrong direction.

So what are you doing wrong?

Chances are … nothing.

 

All Adventures Involve a Slog

Think about some of the adventures you’ve had in life, some of the really memorable things you’ve done. It could be anything:

• Travelling when you were a student
• Going on a road trip
• Forming a band with a group of friends
• Writing a novel (maybe during NaNoWriMo…)
• Starting your own blog
• Doing voluntary work
• Having kids

I’ll bet that, whatever your adventures were, they weren’t end-to-end fun. There were times you wanted to give up. There were moments when you cried, or kicked stuff, or screamed at the universe. But those adventures are over now – and you wouldn’t have missed them for anything.

Here’s one of mine. I went on a week-long trip to Madagascar with my family a couple of years ago, to see the work of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a charity my parents have supported for years. It was an eye-opening trip: I’d never been out of Europe before then. Seeing the astonishingly blue Madagascan sky, and the beautiful landscape as we flew in MAF’s tiny planes, was an incredible experience. It was also very moving to fly out to isolated villages in the bush, and to see the extreme levels of poverty – but also the excitement on children’s faces when they saw the plane.

Some of the memories aren’t such positive ones. Walking through the bush in hot midday sun one afternoon, when we’d run out of water, wasn’t the greatest experience in the world – but we were all fine (and it made us appreciate how we take things like water so much for granted). The ten hour flight there and back wasn’t the most exciting time, either; but it was a necessary part of the journey.

On any worthwhile adventure, there are going to be some hard times and some dull times. You may end up wondering whether it’s all worthwhile. That’s okay. Just don’t fall into the trap of feeling that you should be enjoying every single minute of it – a view often popularised in the self-improvement/personal development world.

 

You Don’t Have to Love Every Minute

In any real adventure or enterprise, there are going to be times when even the things you do love feel tedious and hard. And there will also be a few aspects which you could definitely live without. Perhaps you love writing, but you dread rejections. Or you love being able to play a new piece of music brilliantly – but you find practicing a real chore. Or you were really eager to take a PhD in philosophy, but sometimes it feels like your mind’s tying itself in knots.

Don’t start beating yourself up if you’re not always bubbling over with joy. Don’t tell yourself that you “should” be enjoying it because it’s your passion, or it was your choice.

If you’ve realised that you’re on a path that you don’t care about, then go ahead and quit, with my blessing. You might want to read Quit Your Day Job, if that sounds applicable to your situation. But don’t give up on your dreams just because someone’s told you that they shouldn’t ever feel like hard work.

You might end up reading things like these two quotes and thinking “what the heck is wrong with me? Why aren’t I like that?”

 

She is completely on fire with passion, and we’re savoring every delicious minute of this time in our lives.  Often when I see her now, she will jump up and say, “I am so excited.  I am so excited!”

(Steve Pavlina Podcast #014 – Embracing Your Passion, StevePavlina.com)

 

I’m continuously motivated to drive onward and forward. I’m living every moment in joy and I can’t wait to see what’s next. And the reason why that’s the case is because I’m living my passion. I’m doing what I love – to help others be their best self and live their best life. While I’m busy every day writing at my blog, doing my coaching and conducting speeches, it’s a kind of busyness which I relish in. In fact, I simply can’t get enough of it – I just want to do more and more, because I love all of this so much!

(Celestine Chua, How to be Endlessly Motivated, Motivate Thyself)

I’m passionate about writing, but I don’t always sit down to write feeling like I “can’t get enough of it”. Sometimes I sit down feeling “this is bloody hard work” or “I’m tired” or “I wonder what’s new on Twitter.”

Of course, in the long run, I find writing immensely satisfying and enjoyable. It’s important to me. It’s worthwhile. It helps me sort out the chaos of thoughts into nice, concrete words. And sometimes, I do end up bubbling over with excitement about what I’ve written.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t ever blame yourself if you don’t feel like you’re constantly motivated and enthused. It’s normal not to be. Especially if you’ve not yet made it too far from the start of a new adventure.

 

Every New Adventure Hits a Motivational Trough

You’ve probably experienced new-project syndrome. You set a goal you’re excited about, or you come up with some solid plans. A lot of people do this with their January resolutions. And you’re feeling really fired up and motivated and you’re convinced you can’t possibly fail.

• You’re going to lose 20lbs in two months
• You’re going to run a marathon next year
• Your blog is going to make you rich
• Your novel is going to hit the best-seller lists
• Your band will be on a world tour in a couple of years’ time
• Your small business will grow big enough that you can quit your day job

After three or four weeks, reality has set in … hard. You’ve suddenly realised just how far you’ve got to go. You might even be starting to worry if you’re going in the right direction at all.

The First Few Steps Are Easy, But Then…

This particularly applies when you’re learning something in a new area or at a new level. Over the past decade, I’ve bought around a dozen books on various programming languages. Apart from the one on HTML (which I bought in the late ‘90s so it’s good for nothing but a doorstop now now…), I didn’t make it past chapter three in most of them. Why? Because in any new area, the absolute beginner material is often quite straightforward and easy to absorb – plus, you’ve got that “new-project” feeling. Once it starts to get tough, it’s all too easy to give up and find something else to do.

The same goes for other endeavours. Starting a novel might be quite easy: you’ve got an idea that excites you, and characters that feel completely real. But twenty pages in, you realise you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and the writing just isn’t quite living up to that New York Times bestselling novel you’d pictured…

 

So, When Do I Get Paid?

The second big area where I think this applies is in ventures which you’re keen to make lucrative. Let’s face it, even if you’re freelancing or starting a small business around something you’re passionate about, there’ll be certain things (like marketing, or sales calls, or admin) that you’re not doing for the starry-eyed love of them.

It can be really hard to know if you’re doing the right things for your business venture – especially if you’re working online. Should you be spending time optimising your website so that it ranks better in Google? Would it be better to hang out on Twitter and forums? Is an email list better than a blog? Are you making costly mistakes without even realising? (Incidentally, I highly recommend the home-study Online Business School course, by Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz fame; it helps out with a lot of those kinds of questions and worries.)

If you feel like you’re slogging on with no victory in sight: take another step, and another. It’s normal to go through that. And it’s the people who can slog on when they’re discouraged who ultimately win out.

If you read success stories from anyone who’s “made it” in your field, you’ll probably find a common thread: they all had to overcome struggles, even failure, to begin with.

Many shareware developers give up when their first product isn’t a hit. I’ll tell you that if you can achieve financial success with a one-person, shoestring budget business in only six months, you’re probably superhuman. My first four shareware games were all relative flops — it wasn’t until my fifth release that I was able to produce enough income to live off.

(Steve Pavlina, How NOT to Build a Successful Online Business)

Steve was making over $40,000 a MONTH from his personal development business in 2007. It’s probably more now.

Even though I already had 600 posts and was getting 1500 or so visitors per day my first month or two of earnings averaged at about $1 per day.

(Darren Rowse, Blog Case Study – Is It Time To Quit?)

Darren now makes a six-figure salary from his blogs.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (later Sorceror’s) Stone was rejected by a dozen publishers, including biggies like Penguin and HarperCollins.

(30 famous authors whose works were rejected (repeatedly, and sometimes rudely) by publishers, Examiner.com)

Harry Potter did get accepted … and did rather well

[Stephen King, saving for a scholarship to go to college] During my final weeks at Lisbon High, my schedule looked like this: up at seven, off to school at seven-thirty, last bell at two o’clock, punch in on the third floor of Worumbo at 2.58, bag loose fabric for eight hours, punch out at 11.02, eat a bowl of cereal, fall into bed, get up the next morning, do it all again.

(Stephen King, On Writing – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, pg 57)

Stephen King now makes $45 million a year.

Though, while you’re working for your own breakthrough, you might want to…

Make Your Slogging Easier

Think back on times in the past when you had to work hard at something that you weren’t sure you were going to succeed in. Maybe it was learning a language, or taking a qualification. Go back to childhood: did you successfully learn to swim? To ride a bike? To walk? Those all involved their share of hard work and, quite probably, physical pain!

There may have been times when you felt lost or confused. Perhaps in some cases, you did realise that you were going in the wrong direction – and you took a different path. Even with those experiences, though, you might well be glad that you had them. I didn’t much enjoy living in a tiny box room in a cramped South London flat with a bunch of stranger, in the few months after I graduated … but it was definitely a good growing-up experience.

So tell yourself it’s okay. You don’t have to love every minute of the journey for it to be worthwhile. (But if you’re hating every minute, stop and get your bearings. You’ve gone off-course.) And, much as we might not feel like admitting it, you don’t have to be motivated in order to take action. You can roll up your sleeves, pick up your stout stick, and take the next step – however you feel about it.

Sometimes you’ll feel motivated; sometimes you won’t. But it’s not your motivation that will produce results — it’s your action. Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results.

                (Steve Pavlina, Self-Discipline: Persistance)

And here’s something I’ve found: taking action, getting moving, creates momentum. After writing a 3,000 word guest post this morning and helping clear up at my parents’ church hall in preparation for our kids’ holiday club next week, I can’t say I was dancing with excitement at the prospect of sitting down and drafting this post. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me mention this:

Writing an article on slogging on when motivation’s gone. Which is pretty much how I’m feeling this afternoon. But, onwards…

And, actually, I’ve enjoyed it. As I said earlier, I like writing. It helps me untangle my thoughts. It also helps me avoid scoffing an entire date loaf, cos I’m staying at my parents’ for a week and my granny’s been baking…

(Though, cake is a perfectly legitimate way of making the slog easier. Storm that to-do list, then eat cake…)

Accept that will be times when your big adventure feels like hard work. That’s how you know you’re doing something worthwhile.