Don't Let the Noise Distract You

When you are first starting some sort of change or plan, you will find yourself inundated with ideas, suggestions and research. Often this ends up being noise that echos in your mind, both helping and distracting you as try to progress.

This noise can mean many different things.

• Negative words and remarks.
• Helpfully intended comments and reactions.
• Outside examples of what you’re doing.
• Advice, ideas and methods of action.
• Whatever stuff is either given to you or researched by you.

While some of this information can be helpful and steer you in the right direction, it can also slow you down or change your course, hurting your progress. When you end up spending more time and effort listening to others you often never learn to develop your own methods and processes.

Sometimes what you’re told isn’t what you need.

There are a lot of competing voices coming at you. Each telling you what is the right way to do something. This can result in negative consequences.

• Deviating from your path because of what someone else is telling you.
• Executing sooner then you planned because you’re hearing you should already be moving.
• Feeling that you should be doing more and ending up trying to do too much.
• Getting stuck due to information overload and then just quitting.

In the end you are the person who will make things possible for you. No matter how someone else did something, or what others think is the best method, you have to walk the path.

It is up to you to make the final decisions regarding how you are going to move forward.

Learn from your mistakes.

Seeking out information and others who have successfully managed to get where you’re wanting to go can be a great help. In fact, gleaning information and emulating what has been done can speed up your movement towards goals you’ve set.

However, there can be a cost to blindly following what others have done. You may miss out on learning through failure.

One of the best ways to improve is to make mistakes and then bounce back from them. If you spend a lot of time emulating what you hear, you can easily miss the lessons you learn from mistakes.

There is nothing like the mental strength gained and knowledge learned through failure.

Just keep moving and doing.

Take your time, tune out the voices and concentrate on what you’re trying to do. Your path is not someone else’s. Motivation and pushing can be helpful and necessary, just make sure what you’re pushing towards is what you want.

While it’s nice to see how others got somewhere, eventually you have to strike out and finish on your own terms. Feel free to do things your own way. Just know that the frustration of failure will be part of the journey. As well as the satisfaction of having set the direction.

As long as you’re moving towards your goal you are doing things right.