In just a couple years, I’ll have lived 60 years on this planet and, if there’s one thing I know, it’s success won’t look anything like you think it will! Success is NOT instantaneous, its chart doesn’t look like a straight line trending up, and it is always much more difficult than you think it will be.

I’ve had a lot of experience in this area and I have noticed that life is a lot like my computers have been. When they’re new (think YOUNG), they are fast and eager to please. They zip right along the Information Highway taking you to places yet unknown and bringing you joy and success in the little things of life.

Children ask simple questions and quickly learn their simple answers using that knowledge to catapult them to greater and greater feats of humanity. They walk, they talk, and their parents applaud each tiny victory with great enthusiasm!

After a while, life becomes a bit complicated. More thought is needed to come to a valid conclusion of how to respond to life’s challenges just as your computer’s hard drive becomes overloaded with files. It takes a bit longer to respond and often takes you to places unknown that you really didn’t want to be.

Years later when we are old, life has become so complicated that our hardware burns out. It’s at this point that we need to find workarounds in order to do what used to take us a shorter amount of time in our youth. Legs and backs ache so we walk slowly and have to wait for other transportation in order to get where we are going.

In addition, life will throw a monkey wrench into your plans like a detour in the navigation of your car. Like a program that won’t do something we want so we are forced to figure out another way to get where we want our computer to go.

Success is a LOT like that!

Have you ever heard a success story where anyone accomplished ANYthing without detours, roadblocks, or difficulty? No! And the more amazing the success, the more of those they encountered.

I’ve built several websites, businesses, and ministries from the ground up. Want to guess if I’ve ever encountered detours, roadblocks, or problems? Of course! I’ve shared them on this blog site. I built a huge purple fan page on Facebook that had nearly 9000 fans and then Facebook took my admin status away. And not only from that fan page, but ALL OF THEM! After petitioning for over a year, they gave them back!

I’d built a very successful Art of Eloquence speech communication business selling hard copy books for homeschoolers. Then one day, there was a huge push to provide testing for each batch of materials you made. The law said you had to make sure the ink or whatever was safe. Most major publishers thought it was an extra expense they could absorb. Small publishers like me couldn’t afford to test every 100-batch of books we had published so many of us went to digital format.

The younger generations used to the Information Superhighway to “google” and get instant information often don’t understand what it takes to reach success. Our Microwave Society doesn’t want to wait for results. They want them now! But that’s not how success works.

To achieve success, one must understand that your goal will be considerably harder than you think it will be, more complicated than you’re ready for, and take longer than you ever imagined. You’ll need patience, endurance, and flexibility to change gears when things go sideways. You’ll also need to be ready for the outcome to look significantly different than you had dreamed and that, more often than not, this is for your good and from your God!

That fan page grew to over 10, 000 fans during that year! That Art of Eloquence site has been providing materials for almost 19 years and has included materials for children and adults on many different speech communication topics– and it’s about to expand! Art of Eloquence materials have been endorsed by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and recommended by the Home School Legal Defense Association.

If you shift your mindset from instant and easy to slow and difficult, you’ll be ready for the journey and better able to adapt to its ever-changing roadways. Take it from one who’s been there…one who is currently typing on a computer whose hard drive is on life support and was given 24 hours to live…about a week ago.

To your success!