When Your Dream Overwhelms You

You can always find encouragement to go after your dream. People will tell you that your dream will bring you fulfillment and all of that good stuff. Though it’s true, what people don’t talk about is when you are frustrated as hell because you are doing something really difficult.

How do you get through the days where it is not working out at all? Chasing the dream is fun when you’re winning, but it’s not fun when you lose all your money and want to quit.

When you feel overwhelmed, you get stressed, and you stop making good choices. You default to an extreme of your strength. You can become too emotional or too logical and forget about the human touch that must always be considered.

Maybe you let go of crucial teammates. You just get upset at the wrong person. Either way, I want to leave you with some practical tips.

The Journey When Your Dream Overwhelms You

With Habit Stacker itself, I faced some tough roads and choices that I will let you in because I want you to know that I get it. Habit Stacker is coming off of an injury app I was building that hurt. I finally had to let this one go, and I mention it because I was moving from a project to a new project, and I never lost enthusiasm.

When I started Habit Stacker is was called WeWake, and the goal was to build an alarm clock app. After getting into the project, I realized that it was not going to work. There was no way I could build an iPhone alarm that was worth leaving the iPhone one that most people used.

We had to make a shift, and it got me thinking about what I was already doing well. I had an awesome morning routine, so I figured that would be a great thing to build because none of the apps did what I needed them to. The problem was that I tried to do a lot without having a focus, and I left the name as WeWake. We had to change again.

Introduce Habit Stacker. I finally had clarity and focuses, and we had some glimpses of success. The app had started generating revenue, but this change would be the biggest. The app would be a focused Habit Stacker.

Frustration When The Dream Overwhelms You

The problems entered because we had a house with a foundation already built. We needed the foundation to look much different. I needed about a month’s worth of work. One month became two months, and then for three months.

Every day we were so close to being finished, but we were not there. It felt like the app on the app store had been neglected, and we had lost our loyal following. I was getting mad, and we could not get anything right.

I wanted to throw in the towel. When things are going bad, you see the investment you made that could go down the drain. When things are going well, you see the future return on your investment.

In one swoop, I wanted to fire my whole team and just bring in new people. I was making very emotional choices. I saw obstacles as being much more significant than they were. I just wanted to cry all day. That is the point I am speaking on.

How to Find the Strength to Move on

Is There a Reason to Rush the Process?

Most of the time, frustration is the result of things not going the way you want. Most people give up on dreams because success comes slowly. We all want to win quickly. In that gap is a lot of dreams that were given up on too early.

What are you rushing for, and does it matter? This question always keeps me in check. Sometimes the is a true need to get something done quickly. But most of the time, we succumb to these imaginary pressures. We want to move super fast out of fear that someone else will beat us to the gold.

Take a step back from your project and develop a realistic timeline. If you don’t see any success at all for the next two years? Will you still keep working at it? If the answer is yes, then shut up and keep working and put in your time. Suppose the answer is no, then do something that your willing to put ten years into.

What is The Biggest Pain Point?

Now you know that you’re going to keep moving forward. Quitting is not an option. Now that you know this, you have to figure out what is causing pain. I’ll give you an example.

Our backend developer was an android user and did not have an iPhone, and it causes all sorts of issues because she was developing an iPhone app at the time. I got her an iPhone and solved that problem.

Focus your attention and energy on solving the problem that is causing you the most amount of problems. If you can break down three barriers that are causing you the most issues, think about how much easier it will be to move forward.

Are You The Problem Here?

It’s always tough to think and reflect on your role in the project. When I am getting made at other people, the problem is still me. When I am getting mad at my wife, she is not the issue I am. When I am getting mad at people on my team, the problem always starts with me and my perspective. Take a page from the book Extreme Ownership and just look in the Mirror at yourself.

Once you begin to see that you’re the problem, something powerful happens. You can take ownership, and you get control. When other people are the issue, you have no control. When you are the problem, though, you have full control going forward.

When The Dream Overwhelms Remember Why You Started

Always connect back to the why. I started Habit Stacker because I feel called to help people build the habits that will make them successful.

Discipline and habits make life so much easier. When you are not disciplined, you always have to pay a great price down the road. That is my why? I want to see people live their best life.

Know your why and write it down and review it daily. Your why is everything! Hard times are guaranteed to come your way. You know that you are going to have to overcome obstacles and that no dream will be handed to you.

The value in your dream is in the difficulty. Logically this makes sense, but as you are walking through the fire, emotions can take over.

Never Quit On a Low Moment

The most important thing you need to know is that you can’t quit at your lowest point. That is the worst time to quit because its based all on the emotions and the difficulty you see. Wait until you are out of the valley to evaluate.

If you can keep this in mind, you will not do anything crazy. Sometimes success is just about handing on long enough to reap the cumulative benefits.