The Chicken or the Egg: Your inner critic wants to wage war on your goals.

The Chicken or the Egg: Overnight success is often misconstrued information. Articles reflecting short term results disregard the long applications years prior to achievement and provide an illusion that a simple step or steps is all you need to become great. When, it takes years of persistence to build up to.

I find that I am battling my inner critic this morning as I prepare for my purpose in the coming year. I want to write engaging, beneficial articles that get people out of their chair, or perhaps in it, to accomplish meaningful things. I want to create cultures that benefit agencies. Influence drivers of communication and inspire processes revolving around self-investment. I want to demonstrate the importance of continuing education. I want to push the limits of aspiration, but most of all I want to teach others how to tame their fears and become the best versions of themselves.

In the words of R. Kelly, “My mind’s telling me no, but my body’s telling me yeah.” I know that success will come, so long as I adhere to a discipline of curiosity, pushing myself to learn and to practice. I know that every day through this system of discipline, I become closer to providing these benefits to my readers. I also know that while my body pushes me to read, write and progress. My mind tries to prescribe me the “Don’t get your hopes up pill.” This is where I and my inner critic go to war. I don’t always succeed. I don’t always walk away without battle scars. But I do continue to fight, and I get better at fighting this unwanted pill every day.

As I read Jim Collin’s, Good to Great, an analogy so thoroughly prescribes the antidote I needed this morning. “The remarkable Revolution of the Egg!” “Stunning turnaround at Egg!” – as if the egg had undergone some overnight metamorphosis, radically altering itself into a chicken.” Isn’t it so true that we cling to this idea of making one change, taking one step or trying one thing, and believing that within thin air some glorious transformation to ourselves occurs? Only to find out a month or so without discipline in those actions, we are back we started. Or that even with those disciplines we are only somewhat better.

I love this analogy because it took the chicken a long time to develop inside the egg. It took a long time for it become the best chicken version of itself, all while no one was noticing, until poof! Out came a chicken and we said “Wow! Look honey, a chicken!” I won’t wake up one morning a millionaire, or the most influential writer of 2023 through some form of overnight success. However, I can create the potential for such through consistency and discipline in my work. By getting up early every morning to read, by continuing to write on my lunch breaks, and by maintaining a curiosity of consistent direction in what I truly wish to accomplish.

Your inner critic wants to wage war on your goals. It thinks by prescribing a pill it will keep you safe should you not succeed. It will prescribe the “You can’t create a million-dollar agency pill.” The “You can’t compete with your competitor pill.” Or worse, “You don’t know what you’re doing pill.” Don’t take the pill. You are still developing within the egg. You still have time to develop your practice and turn the wheel of fortune. You still have time, and it will take time, to become the best version of yourself. I will continue to work hard and create work to inspire my fellow agents and even through some publications will be better than others, I will push to understand your greatest needs. Most of all I will remember that I am too, still within egg, working to become one heck of a chicken, are you? – Michelle

“Decisions help us start. Discipline helps us finish.”- John C. Maxwell