38. Learn to come from behind
Progress toward your goals is never going to be a straight line. It will always be a bumpy line. You’ll go up and then come down a little. Two steps forward and one step back. There’s a good rhythm in that. It is like a dance. There’s no rhythm in a straight line upward.
However, people get discouraged when they slide a step back after two steps forward. They think they are failing, and that they’ve lost it. But they have not. They’re simply in step with the natural rhythm of progress. Once you understand this rhythm, you can work with it instead of against it. You can plan the step back.
In The Power of Optimism, Alan Loy McGinnis identifies the characteristics of tough-minded optimists, and one of the most important ...
Get 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
