I always thought that somehow life would just get awesome. When I was a kid I was just certain that things were going to inevitably get crazy good. I was going to be a professional athlete or a well-known politician or something tremendous like that. As I get older and hopefully wiser, I’m beginning to realize that the view of success that I had was not realistic.

There was an entitled assumption that somehow success and recognition would be served up on a silver platter. I felt that I deserved it just by virtue of the fact that I am me. I have begun to realize however, that life has a lot more to do with what you make of it. I recently read in a book that mastery of any given field takes approximately 10,000 hours regardless of what field you choose…that’s a lot of time!

At some point you have to look in the mirror and realize that Then is Now. If now is not the then that you envisioned, then the only way you will ever get to that then is to change your now. Then is not just going to happen. You’re not going to win the lottery. You’re not going to be handed success. The crazy book deal is not magically going to appear out of thin air. The crazy promotion that you kinda sorta hope you will get probably isn’t coming.

If you will begin (or continue) the long, hard road of making small investments daily over a long period of time, you may someday find that they yield MASSIVE cumulative results (Andy Stanley’s Best Question Ever). So try not to be too much of a day dreamer. Have you ever seen the movie Rudy? If you haven’t, what planet are you from?! All his life he hoped that he would play for Notre Dame and then one day he had to confront the cold, hard truth. He wasn’t very smart and he wasn’t very good at football. So what did he do? He got back to the basics and learned how to excel at football and school. Eventually he got to actually play in a game for the Fighting Irish and realize the dream that he had all his life.

Are you willing to do the hard work in the quiet hours when nobody is around? Are you willing to confront the cold, hard truth that perhaps you’re not as good as you think you are? Are you intentionally living a daydream that you hope nobody will ever wake you up from? Then is now and if now is not what you wanted, it’s time to choose a different now so that you can experience a different then.