“Showing up is essential. Showing up consistently is powerful. Showing up consistently with a positive outlook is even more powerful.”_Jeff Olson
John Maxwell, a prolific author who has written several books on the great laws of success and irrefutable principles of leadership once said he personally wouldn’t want to be known for remarkable creativity or superhuman intelligence.
He would rather prefer to be notable for only one thing; a commitment for showing up day after day.
Now if you consider his stand somewhat ridiculous, then please read further to learn what some other masters in their fields say about this simple principle of success.
Woody Allen (Academy-award winning movie director) says: “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.”
Harvey Mackay (Author of seven New York Times best-selling books) adds: “You can beat 80% of the competition just by showing up.”
Stephen Hawking (Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge) concludes: “Half the battle is just showing up.”
I hope by now, you can see the importance of showing up, day after day. Indeed, for any serious-minded person, it is a worthy motto to live by.
And it means that when it comes to either ordinary success or extra-ordinary achievements, you don’t focus on superhuman measure of discipline you have to forge into your character but you focus on just showing up for your task every day without fail.
No wonder Paul Budnitz, founder of Kidrobot infers that: “Success is an accident. Showing up (everyday), even if it’s just for 5 minutes, makes us accident-prone.”
For your personal benefit, you should ask yourself the following two questions used by true professionals to know whether you are on track towards your big goals or not:
Do I show up everyday?
Do I show up, no matter what—especially when it is easier not to?
You can use the two question above to strengthen your identity as a truly committed person.
Any intelligent doer can achieve truly remarkable things when he decides to make showing up daily at his game a core priority.
If all we have to do is show up, then it becomes very easy to beat procrastination, which is the number one reason for failure in every walk of life.
Once we overcome procrastination, we’ll easily show up every day to perform our duties, and when we show up everyday on the things that matter, then it is only a matter of time for us to experience the big break that we desire.
Showing up on day one is just the beginning but doing it day after day is where the real power lies. In essence winning is the total sum of our meaningful efforts, repeated day in, day out.
Let me conclude this article with the wisdom of Anne Lamott, the author of, ‘Bird by Bird’ who wrote:
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up (day after day) and do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.”
