You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been feeling a little discouraged. Yesterday I posted an excerpt from the 10th anniversary edition of the Freedom Writer’s Diary as a reminder to myself of how far I’ve come.
I needed the reminder because I was starting to feel like I haven’t gotten much accomplished so far this year (yes I realize we’re only a month and eight days into the new year, what of it? I’m an overachiever, I’m used to rocking the shit out of everything I do) <--- It's this thinking right here that has been getting me into trouble. I mean seriously, can I expect to have accomplished everything I want to do this year in a matter of 40 days?
I think not.
So it was exactly what I needed when I saw this tweet from Carla Young:
Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams & reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so. – Belva Davis
That space between the dream and reality is something I’ve come to know as the GAP: God’s Area of Preparation. Every goal, every dream, every accomplishment takes time and preparation. It takes time. And how one manages the GAP makes the difference between failure and getting to where you want to be.
What the heck am I talking about?
Say you have a list of goals: a few of them are pretty simple to jump into and others take some planning and working before you see results. This is where I am right now. I’ve already jumped into the fitness goal (though I hurt my back, as soon as my two weeks is up–assuming my back stops hurting by then–I’m back to the lunchtime yoga and pilates). I’ve been pretty consistent with posting to this blog (I’ve forgotten a day or two–or three–but if you saw my lack of consistency before you know that I’ve made progress).
The other two things I want to accomplish by year’s end take a little more doing than the fitness and blogging. Who am I kidding? They take a lot more doing. And this weekend while I was frustrated about my back and the crappy week at work, I got down on myself because I’m not seeing the results I’d like to see. Of course this is because my expectations were unrealistic.
Seriously, I only made a real plan a few days ago, some of the steps of which have yet to be implemented. What it boils down to is that I wanted to results to appear as a by-product of my awesomeness. I don’t know about you, but if my post yesterday is any indication, things don’t just happen because you’re awesome and you’re not awesome because things happen. Things happen because you work your ass off and that working your ass off is how you prove your awesomeness.
So today, I’m resolving myself not to get down by the end of the month if my door still isn’t being beat down by freelance clients and I haven’t yet completed my grad school application essay. It’s all a work in progress and learning not to be afraid of the space between my dreams and reality.
I’m in the GAP and I’m ok with that…for now.