Guy Reams (00:00.526)
Today is day 194, stumbling blocks to stepping stones. So when I was a young boy, I remember my mom was doing a presentation somewhere, I think a political thing or maybe a church thing, I'm not sure, but she was painting rocks. So she went out and got a whole bunch of rocks, small like pebble type rock, the type of rock you would skip on a lake with, right? Those type of rocks.
River rocks, I think is what they're called. Yeah, river rocks. So she got a bunch of river rocks and then she started writing on the river rocks. On one side she would write stumbling block and on the other side she'd write stepping stone. And of course me wanting to help, I got employed to assist. And so we wrote out stumbling block and stepping stone on about 20 of these rocks.
Not too long ago when I was at my grandmother's house, I found one of those rocks that we had painted. So I thought that it just reminded me of that experience. But I've been contemplating that a lot lately, just this phrase, stumbling block to stepping stone. And I think I've determined that this is one of the key things that prevents people from progressing.
So I think I've narrowed down to three primary things that cause people to falter in their progress. The first is focus. The more focused you are, the more likely that your efforts will make progress towards what you're trying to do. When you get distracted and diluted, even though you might be putting effort towards it, your efforts are not as easily realized. And sometimes,
You're fighting against something that has enough resistance to where your little bit of unfocused effort is not enough to overcome the resistance. So consequently, focused energy tends to overcome the resistance and you start making more progress. So that's the first one. The second one is consistency. People don't realize it, but oftentimes they'll put effort towards something, but then they'll take too many breaks or too many stalls in between. So they might do a little bit of effort and then they'll take a break for a few days, they'll do a little bit more effort.
Guy Reams (02:22.702)
So they're not consistent enough. Once again, this idea of inertia, sometimes you have to have enough consistent forward steady progress to get some inertia going so that you can actually see and visualize the progress. Oftentimes by taking breaks, we keep, it's like imagine this, you're pushing a big boulder out of a hill, out of like a depression on the ground.
and you push it a little bit and you make a little bit of progress and then you walk away and the rock settles back down into the depression. So you have to have enough consistency to get that rock up and over the depression so that it can get onto the other side. So this is why consistency is important. But the third one is the one I'm adding today, which is this idea that...
There are things that are usually in our way that are very difficult or that we're the most afraid to do. So a really good litmus test to figure out what might be in your way of progress is to ask yourself, what is the thing that I'm the most afraid of doing right now? Or the second question would be, what is the thing that I think is the hardest to do right now? Usually those are the same thing, but maybe not always, but...
Usually the most difficult thing and the thing that we're the most afraid of doing are usually the things that are in our way. Those are the stumbling blocks. On any path to success, you will always have those stumbling blocks in your way. Now, there's a really important understanding here. People that are successful are usually the ones that have overcome the stumbling block that nobody else is willing to do.
What's interesting is you'll oftentimes look at somebody like, for example, sales. I remember talking to a salesperson when I was younger in my career that was really good at sales. And they were just really good at talking to people and having conversations and open up pathways. And I realized after talking to them that this person had overcome their greatest fear. So when they first started in their business, they were petrified of talking to people.
Guy Reams (04:35.246)
but they overcame that stumbling block and now they were really good at it. So by overcoming something that was really difficult for this person to do that they were really afraid of, they became really good at it. Their weakness became their strength. And as it turns out, most people that get into sales are afraid of talking to people like that. And so as a consequence, the ones that figure out how to overcome that are the ones that are the most likely to be success. This is why success is so rare.
because it always requires us to overcome a significant obstacle. So I like to think of the rock that my mom had me paint. If I can flip the stumbling block to stepping stone, then I can learn to overcome my fears, overcome the things that are the most difficult, and I can become good at those things. Now, unfortunately, the path to the progress is filled with stumbling blocks. You'll overcome one or two,
just to find a few more coming up along the way. What you thought was really difficult before will seem like nothing compared to the next one you have to deal with. But this is the path, right? This is the way. We need to become good at overcoming these stumbling blocks. The better we become at realizing and recognizing when we have one and putting our energies to overcome it, the faster our success will come.