Lately I’ve been sensing in myself and others, especially online, that there is a feeling of urgency to be successful. Now more than ever it is awe inspiring to see the shooting stars of the internet world have great success in what they do. It’s amazing to see the big corporations start to reward these bloggers with attention, features, and sometimes a bunch of loot. And some people are seeing corporate level paychecks from their passion projects. While others are getting dozens and sometimes hundreds of comments.
The internet is gaining steam and many of us want to be on that train to huge success right this instant.
So we are leaning in, pushing ourselves, and trying to break into that special spotlight that casts its light on the “big” people of the internet.
But in most cases we are all striving for levels we have yet to achieve and it can be disheartening over time to feel like despite all of our efforts, we just can’t quite get there.
We haven’t made it yet.
But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. One thing I continue to remind myself comes from Gary Vaynerchuk. He is always quick to point out two things: how young the internet is and how much longer we are going to be working in our lifetime.
He always has his eye on the much bigger picture, he feels like a kid at 36 with so much left to give and with so much room to grow. While here I am at 27 feeling exasperated thinking that after 13 years of business and three years of blogging I’m still not “where I want to be yet.”
His paradigm on life always gives me a reality check when I’m feeling frustrated. And I think this is something many of us can keep in mind for our web efforts or life intentions.
With any luck, we are going to be adding value in our lives, possibly here on the internet, for a very long time. So perhaps we need to sometimes take a chill pill when it comes to the grasping and “now now now” mentality. The internet moves so quickly with tools like Facebook and it’s easy to think that our success needs to come at the same pace as our Twitter feed.
But that’s not the case. We just need to remember to just keep going and pace ourselves for the long haul. If we really are in this for the foreseeable future, there is no need to stress over where we are today. There is plenty of room for us to get “there.”
As Tony of P90X likes to say, “just do your best and forget the rest.”
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