Life is a long game.
BY SARAH ANNE HAYES
Sarah Anne Hayes is a believer, writer, and unabashed bibliophile. She spends her days running her small business, planning out her next adventure, belting out show tunes, and hanging out with her incredible fiancé. Sarah believes life is a gift meant to be celebrated, Tuesday morning should be as memorable as Saturday night, and nothing boosts your confidence like the perfect red lipstick.
I remember well the day the Starbucks mobile app became a thing. It was simultaneously one of the best and worst things to ever happen to me.
Best because it meant I could get my Starbucks fix even on the days I was barely on time, and worst because, well, that meant I was getting my Starbucks fix a heck of a lot more often (and my wallet was taking a much heavier hit).
The sales pitch for the restaurant mobile app is almost always the same — save time, avoid the line. Basically, get the thing you want instantly, without having to wait for it. It emphasizes a predominant feature of modern-day culture: we are people who like things to happen quickly.
We don’t just have fast food, we have mobile ordering apps. We don’t just have online shopping, we have Amazon 2-day (or same day) delivery. We don’t just have entertainment rental services, we have instant streaming.
All day, every day, we have opportunities for instant gratification at our fingertips, which has turned us into a culture of people who do not like to wait.
In my professional life, I’ve been in the online entrepreneurial space for just over two years. If you’ve spent much time in said space, you know the culture there is often reflective of the culture at large. Just like we want instant gratification when it comes to our food choices or online shopping habits, we also want instant gratification when it comes to our professional or personal efforts. We don’t just want to be successful, we want to be the overnight sensation.
We want the story where everything magically falls into place, where some effort is required but not too much, where the thing we’ve decided to do takes off immediately and we’ve suddenly jumped the gap from dream life to real life.
But here’s the rub: that isn’t how it usually works.
For all the ways you can manufacture instant gratification in your daily consumption, you can’t force it in life as a whole.
It’s a weird tension to live in, because it often leads you to believe that if a thing you love doesn’t take off instantly, that you’ve failed somehow. That if your side hustle hasn’t turned into a full-time business within a few months, you messed up. That if your business is still fledgling or your blog only has a small following or your email list has a minimal number of subscribers even after months or years of effort, you got it wrong and should clearly just give up now.
But nothing could be further from the truth. You see, life is a long game, my friend.
While it’s great when things happen quickly and you succeed at something you love without having to spend years and years building it, that isn’t always the case. A slow build isn’t an indication of failure.
I know what it’s like to let the lies creep in and tell you you’re never going to make it. Two years in, and my business still has a lot of growing to do and it definitely isn’t at the place some other businesses were at the two year point. But two years is such a short time in the long run.
Whether you’ve been on this earth for 17 or 25 or 32 or 48 or any other number of years, it’s taken that long for you to become who you are today. It didn’t happen without hard work and effort and patience. And continuing to become the person you were created to be will only happen with more hard work, effort, and patience.
Most of us aren’t child prodigies. Most of us aren’t overnight sensations. Most of us have to put in a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build something or become someone the world at-large views as “successful.”
But the best things in life can’t be forced or manufactured. They can’t be boiled down into an app that lets you hand-pick your order and have it show up at your door by the end of the day.
No, the best things in life take time. They take effort. They take a whole lot of hard work and the knowledge that the only true failure is to give up too soon.
Whatever you’re pushing or working toward . . . the game isn’t over yet. It might feel impossible right now. It might feel like you royally screwed up and should throw in the towel. It might feel like it’s never going to work out like you hope. It might feel like everyone else is getting their moment to shine and you’re struggling in silence and solitude.
Keep going, my friend. Keep struggling and working for that thing that you love — be it a business, a hobby, a relationship, or a personal victory that will matter to no one but you.
Life is a long game, friend, and it’s well worth the effort.