Last week, while doing a deep cleaning in my studio at 9 o'clock at night, after an especially rough day, I stumbled across a notebook. I was feeling down about a lot of things from a business standpoint because it felt as though a lot of the the things I want to accomplish are taking much longer than I had hoped. However, when I opened that notebook, my mindset changed.
There on the very first page, a list of business goals for 2012 stared back at me. As I read the list, I began laughing. They seemed so incredibly small and silly. I hoped to complete my first craft show, something I've done so many times at this point that I could almost do it with my eyes closed. I set a goal for 400 sales for the year. Now, I'm hovering at just above 17,000 sales in my Etsy shop in the time I've been in business. I wanted to design my own website, and here I am, writing a blog post that will be published on my own website.
While these goals made me laugh at first due to the fact that they seemed so simple, they suddenly made me stop and really think. These goals were set four years ago. And in four years, my business has changed and grown in ways that I couldn't have even imagined then as I jotted that list of goals down in the notebook. This thought made me realize that change and growth take time. I might have a vision of where I would like to be right now, but maybe it's ok that where I am doesn't align with that vision. Maybe it's meant to happen a year or two from now.
I've never been one to have a lot of patience. Even as a child, my parents were constantly reminding me to have patience, to slow down, to just let things play out. And here I am, at age 32, needing those kinds of reminders yet again. Four years is a lot of time, and things happen in ways that we don't always expect. That list of goals from four years ago was just the reminder I needed to realize that despite feeling as if I'm going nowhere at times, I am actually making huge leaps and bounds of progress. I just need to have a little more patience.
Where were you four years ago? Have you reflected upon goals from many years ago? How did that change your perspective on your progress in life or in business?