Goals and dreams do not happen overnight!

I recently listened to the book “Will” by Will Smith. First of all if you are a product of the ‘80s and you grew up watching the TV sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” or a fan of the MIB movie blockbusters you of course know who Will Smith is. While the book is not intended to be a book on productivity but rather the story of Will Smith’s life, there are many buried treasures and nuggets that one can garner from it. Will shares in the first few pages of the book a story about his father teaching him a lesson, that he didn’t fully understand at the time. He and his brother were tasked with building a brick wall. They built the wall over the course of a year, one brick at a time. We don’t just build a wall, we need to layer and place one brick at a time. LIFE IS NOT DIFFERENT!

Sometimes when we start down the road to a goal, we want instant success, we just want to achieve the dream now. We must break down that goal into actionable tasks. Dr. BJ Fogg also discusses this when it comes to building habits in his book “Tiny Habits”. When we break down our goals into bitesize actionable tasks we too can build our proverbial brick wall over time.

If we have identified a next actionable task on our journey to our goal achievement and yet days and weeks go by and we haven’t completed that task, we feel deflated. Step back and consider if you are trying to place too many bricks at once or your bricks are too big and heavy, you can’t seem to lift them into place. If this resonates with you then consider downsizing those actionable tasks. By achieving the smaller tasks more consistently over time on your journey to your goal, I am confident that you too will eventually build the wall and your dream will come to reality.

On a side note, I would highly recommend listening to it on audio because Will Smith narrates, giving it a special tone and enjoyment.