The fact is I have not made ANY progress since my last blog post. Not one tiny bit. I don’t, however, see this as a negative thing. Do I need to make progress? Yes – I do. But the fact that I haven’t is not evidence of a lack of motivation.

First of all, I took yesterday off from blogging altogether. I didn’t post on my personal blog and I didn’t post on this IM blog. The reason I didn’t was really because of sheer exhaustion. When I jumped into this thing, I jumped in with both feet and just went at it full speed! Besides that, yesterday was a really rough day at work, and by the time I got home I had such a headache that all I wanted to do was lay down and rest. So – that’s what I did.

At first I felt incredibly guilty for doing that. I was thinking to myself that I was letting all my new found IM friends down by not putting the effort into growing yesterday. I felt like I was letting my wife down because she, too, wants to see me fulfill my dreams of being able to do the things I want to do and not be a “slave” to employment. Most of all, I felt like I was letting myself down. I felt like I was taking the night off and that it was all too possible that would be my stopping point. I was able to talk myself into not really believing all of that, but only because I had such a bad headache that I just couldn’t make myself do it.

That turned out to be a good thing! I came home today (I am writing all of my posts at night and publishing them in the morning…) and had more resolve than ever to get in front of my blog and type something…ANYTHING…as long as it could be meaningful. As I thought about what would mean something I decided that sharing my thoughts about my lack of progress could be insightful if someone came across this blog one day who was feeling like they just weren’t moving forward.

If I, as a complete newbie to the IM world, were to offer advice to other newbies getting started, I think I would say two things:

1)When you’re starting out…pace yourself. Don’t burn yourself out so that you begin to hate what you’re doing. So far I’ve had a lot of fun. If I had forced myself to read or blog last night, I think I probably would have just been grumpy and irritated. Sometimes rest can be just as important as progress!

2)Find yourself some good IM friends. Anna, Holly, Joe and Davin barely know me, but they have been INCREDIBLY uplifting and have offered some GREAT encouragement. It’s like Joe said in a comment in one of my posts…with friends like these, I have no choice but to succeed!

My lack of progress yesterday was just me hitting the pause button. I didn’t take any steps backward and I feel refreshed and ready to start moving forward again. I’m looking forward to this weekend because I’ll have some more time to sit down and finish reading Holly’s book and I’ll be able to start formulating my goals and business plans. The good news is I want this so bad I can taste it. I am excited and motivated and can’t wait to start learning and implementing more and more!

I truly hope others enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it…but you know what? Even as I was writing this post I realized more and more just how dedicated I have become to this. So if nothing else, this post was great for me!