This week, I interviewed a former client of mine, Andrew.

We first worked together two years ago, when he was building a new venture alongside his main business.

That side business went from zero to $1 million in its first year.

And Andrew isn’t the only one.

You’ll see many stories like his across our client case studies and testimonials – people achieving significant commercial results in timelines that, at the outset, might have seemed improbable.

It made me think about something I see all the time:

We don’t just decide what we think is possible. We also decide how long we think it should take.

And that decision may be slowing you down far more than you realise.

At the end of today’s article, I’m giving you one simple exercise to apply to your biggest goal. It takes five minutes, and it may completely change what you do next.

When Andrew and I spoke this week, something about that result struck me all over again.

Not the $1 million.

The speed.

Because most of us have an idea of how long things are supposed to take.

Building a successful business takes years.

Reaching seven figures takes years.

Landing a major client takes months.

Making a significant change in your life takes time.

But how much of that is actually true?

And how much have we simply decided is true?

This matters more than you might think.

Because once you decide that something will take two years, you don’t just put a date two years into the future.

You start behaving like someone who has two years.

You wait.

You prepare.

You put things off until next quarter.

You decide you need to get one thing working before you can start another.

You tell yourself you’ll approach the bigger client when you have more evidence.

You’ll make the bigger offer when you’re more established.

You’ll do the thing you really want to do when you’re ready.

Without realising it, you start making decisions that fit the timeline you’ve given yourself.

And then, when the result takes two years, you have all the evidence you need that you were right.

This is something I have become fascinated by in my work.

How much time do we unknowingly put between ourselves and the things we want?

One of the principles behind Directing Reality is deciding the destination first, rather than allowing your current circumstances to dictate what you believe is possible.

I think we need to do the same thing with time.

Because compressing the timeline doesn’t mean doing twice as much work in half the time.

I have absolutely no interest in that.

It means looking at everything you’ve assumed needs to happen between where you are and where you want to be, and asking whether it really does.

Do you actually need more leads, or do you need to have better conversations with the ones you already have?

Do you need six months to perfect the offer, or could you put it in front of somebody next week?

Do you need to build an enormous audience, or do you need to become known by the right people?

Do you need to wait until you’re more established before making the bigger move, or could making the bigger move be the thing that establishes you?

Do A, B and C really need to happen before D?

Or have you simply assumed that they do?

These are very different questions from:

How can I work harder?

And they produce very different answers.

So, as promised, here’s the five-minute exercise.

Take the single biggest result you want right now.

Not everything you want to change.

One result.

Write down when you currently expect it to happen.

Now halve the timeline.

If you’ve given yourself twelve months, make it six.

If you’ve given yourself six months, make it three.

You don’t need to believe you can achieve it in that time.

That’s not the point.

The point is to force your mind to solve a different problem.

Now ask yourself:

If this had to happen in half the time, what would I do differently?

What would I stop doing?

What would I do immediately?

Who would I speak to now rather than later?

What decision would I make?

What would I ask for?

What am I doing sequentially that could happen simultaneously?

What am I spending months preparing for that I could simply test?

And perhaps most importantly:

What am I assuming has to happen first?

Write down your answers.

Then choose the one answer that would create the greatest movement towards your result.

And act on it within the next 48 hours.

Not next month.

Not when everything else is ready.

Within 48 hours.

You may discover that your original timeline was completely reasonable. Some things genuinely do take time.

But you may also discover that some of the distance between you and the result was never really there.

You put it there.

And perhaps directing your reality isn’t about finding a way to do more and more in less time.

Perhaps it’s about becoming much more discerning about what actually needs to happen at all.

Don’t ask how to fit more work into less time.

Ask how much of the work, waiting and preparation you assumed was necessary in the first place.

Guinevere Ellis
The Mind Director™

Directing Reality. Expecting Extraordinary.