You’re no less worthy of success just because it felt “easy”

There are just so many lessons from 2020 that I want to share with you. I think you're really going to find today's one interesting, because it's something I've noticed a lot of my students in Launch Magic are doing, and also more generally in my audience as a whole.

So today's lesson is that it's you're no less worthy of something just because it felt easy or you're no more worthy of something just because it felt hard. Basically, we over-complicate things so much. And I am no exception to the rule.

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Why success doesn't need to be difficult

 

I know in the first half of last year I was definitely making things so much harder than they needed to be. I had this belief that business was supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be a challenge. It couldn't possibly be easy.

 

Don't over complicate things

As a result, I started purposefully over-complicating things and making things harder than they needed to be. I was self-sabotaging. I was looking for little details that I could overcomplicate. I was doing more. I was saying yes to more. I was taking on more tasks. I was overwhelming myself. And I made things so hard. Because the reality is you don't need to do everything. You don't need to say yes to everything. You can say no to tasks. You can decide that rather than making something perfect, you're going to make it good enough. So I'm actually going to read you guys a little extract from my book. Who would have thought? Obviously, it's nowhere near ready to be published. I'm still in the process of writing it, but this is one of my favourite paragraphs or favourite sections from my book, about why you're no less worthy of something just because it was easy.

 

Challenge the belief that you must work hard to get success

“I was raised to believe that hard work is a non-negotiable to succeed in life. That if you wanted good things, you have to work for them. Seems like a pretty good belief to hold onto, right? And it was. It served me through years of school exams, university exams, corporate life, all of the places where working hard got me the grades, the degree and the job. It served me in the early days of my first business where it really was a matter of putting my nose down and doing the work. But somewhere along the line, the belief that success takes hard work, stopped serving me.

And it didn't just stop serving me. It actually led to self-sabotage. Only it took a few years before I looked it in the eye and called it out for what it was. You see, the same pesky little belief that had got me onto the Business School Dean's list back in 2014, landed me my dream job and got me going in business in the first place. That belief created friction whenever things were going a little bit too easily. So in relationships, whenever things were going well, this belief had me questioning whether this was the right person. In business, it had me busying myself with pointless tasks just so I could feel like I was working for it. It had me procrastinating just to make life harder for myself. It had me over-complicating the simplest of tasks because I felt like they had to be difficult. It had me feeling unworthy of success because I felt like it had all just been a little bit too easy.

Our brains are tricky things because as you've learned in this book so far, none of it was easy. Just because you've worked hard for something doesn't guarantee you'll be successful. I'm pretty sure you can think of at least a handful of people in your life who work bloody hard, but who are also perpetually struggling. Conversely, just because it's easy, doesn't mean you can't be successful with it. The only downside to success coming easily is that I believe that you value and appreciate it a whole lot more when you've worked hard for it and you faced adversity to get there. But that there's a difference between overcoming genuine challenges and creating your own for no reason other than to feel deserving of your success.”

 

I hope that section has resonated with you guys because even just rereading it now about a month or so since I wrote that, I am already thinking, “Actually, you know what? I've fallen back into the pattern of making things harder than they need to be in certain areas of my business and in my life.” So I really hope that you will start to question, “Am I making this harder than it needs to be?” with everything you do in your business in 2021.

 

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