Everyone is probably familiar with the image from the show Quantum Leap. A guy gets caught in some kind of loop where he jumps from person to person, righting wrongs and fixing their love lives, among other things. Great show from the 80s.
In this series of posts, I’ve been covering the things that will kill your success. These are common things that get in the way of whatever it is you want to become or do.
The quantum leap I’m talking about is the get rich quick kind, the hurry up and have success. This is the thing that everyone wants to happen. “Be a success overnight!” “Win the lottery!” “Must have it now!” That kind of thing.
See, most people when they start an endeavor think, “I’m going to write this book, publish it, and it’s going to sell a bazillion copies and I’ll never have to work again.” That actually goes for just about anything people attempt to do. “I’m going to start an xyz business and it’s going to be instantly successful.” If they aren’t saying these things, they are thinking them in some form. And of course, they already set themselves up for failure.
It’s normal to want to be a success at something. In fact, you SHOULD want to be successful at whatever it is you’re doing. That quantum leap, though? Most likely not happen.
Movies show the quantum leap all the time. The hero goes from zero to hero in less than 2 hours. The truth is, that rarely happens. When we hear of some break-out business, or author, or athlete, most likely they have taken the everyday simple steps, DAY IN AND DAY OUT to achieve their success. Sorry for the caps.
Take Andy Weir for example. Most people think he’s an overnight success. That’s not true. Andy had been writing since roughly 2002, and had multiple attempts and getting published. his novel The Martian was free on his website for awhile, and readers were clamoring for an Amazon edition. He put it together and stuck in on Amazon for 99 cents. The rest is history.
The point is, he kept at it. He didn’t just write The Martian. He wrote other things first. He kept writing. He didn’t just write a single novel. He developed a readership over time, and when that readership clamored for an amazon version, he made one. His readers bought it, which catapulted it to success. He didn’t just write it and stick in on amazon and right away become an instant success. The fact that it’s a success has little to do with some kind of flash in the pan success. It has more to do with the fact that he kept doing things over and over.
Stephen King.
Everyone knows how Carrie was turned down umpteen times. He wrote the first chapter and threw it in the trash can. His wife fished it out, read it, and told him he was on to something.
King kept submitting that book over and over and over until someone picked it up. No one saw him do that except maybe his wife. Anyone who doesn’t know that story probably thinks King was a flash in the pan.
There’s hundreds of thousands of examples of people who did tiny little steps, every day, that eventually got the ball rolling so fast down the hill it appeared to be a quantum leap.
If you’re running a business, there’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you know about. You may be writing, making covers for your book. Maybe marketing, using facebook ads. Interacting with your readers. Telling people about your book. Either way, it’s the little things, the seemingly small things that take you up or down.
The problem is, everyone’s just waiting for the quantum leap to come along. The people who are successful, aren’t. They know that by making a plan, sticking with it day in and day out, they will eventually achieve their goals. That mentality comes with having the right philosophy, which is something I’ll talk about later. For now, just remember this:
The only way to get where you want to go is by DOING. And THERE IS NO QUANTUM LEAP to success. That is all.
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