You always hold the rights to your effort, but never to your results.
Results are entitled to no one. At best, they are on loan and must be renewed each day.
All you own is the right to try.

As if on cue, James Clear sends me the message I didn’t want to hear but needed to hear. This is not the first time I heard him say some variation of this, but it’s always refreshing every single time. Probably because I had yet to learn it deeply.

You see, I’d been feeling frustrated over my lack of progress on my products. COVID definitely threw a huge curve ball at the progress, and now I find myself seemingly restarting my momentum from ground zero again. But because I want it so much, I got ahead of myself. That’s why James Clear’s words stung. 

That I’m not entitled to the results, no matter how hard I try. 

True, effort has a part to play to nudge things along to create the right conditions for results to arise, but in the fluid chaotic beautiful mess called reality, results are certainly not a given. Frustration comes from expecting and feeling entitled to results, when there’s none given. 

All I own is the opportunity to try harder, smarter, better the next day. And if results do come, it’s only on loan for today, and have to be renewed tomorrow.

Renew your commitment every single day, just as the sun rises every morning.