What we really need to make our dreams come true

A person can have access, privilege, smarts, and all of the things we automatically believe it takes to be successful, but without tenacity, it won’t happen.  No matter what the goal, you have to do the work to get there.

A Ph.D. friend of mine told me, “You don’t earn a Ph.D., you become one.” 

Whatever the field of study, a doctorate degree is an acknowledgment that you have discovered or created something that has never been done before.  It requires original research and the findings are then summarized in the dissertation. 

That document is usually bound into book form and placed on the library shelf.  Ideally, other researchers use that original research to further the field. 

Pretty intimidating, right?

Any academic advisor can tell you that when a student is facing the final draft of their dissertation, they are most at risk of failure.  There are many who leave academia with the designation ABD (All But Dissertation) rather than Ph. D. because it’s just too much. 

They were sooooo close….  Those students live with that decision for the rest of their lives. 

We become our best selves by tapping into our tenacity.

Do the work

Know this though, the closer we come to reaching our end goal, the louder the Dreamkillers will be.  They delude us by flooding our brains with messages of despair.  They find creative ways for us to avoid doing what needs to be done. 

We get past them by reconnecting with our end goal and Doing The Work.  Doing the work takes tenacity, pure and simple.

Besides thwarting the Dreamkillers, there are other ways that tenacity can serve us:

• Skill building.  You know the old saw, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice Practice Practice.  Tenacity is that inner voice that sends us to the rehearsal space even when other things pull us in a different direction.
• Joy of the work itself.  Tenacity allows us to engage with the thing we love on a regular basis.  The more we engage, the more we’re pulled toward doing more, and the more we fall in love again with our Dream.
• Confidence. As we engage with our devoted task, we get better at what we do and we become stronger in our belief that we have what it takes.  Engaging tenacity to build skills and focus our effort gives us grounded certainty that we can succeed.
• Bragging rights.  It feels really good to look back on a difficult task and know that it was accomplished through our effort alone.  Tenacity pushes us to the finish line where we can bask in the glow of completion.

Tenacity gets us past the Dreamkillers.  Tenacity is our secret sauce to completion.  Tenacity will never let you down.