Pain is temporary! It may last for a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year. But eventually it will subside and something else will take it’s place. If I quit however, it will last forever.
Eric Thomas, Motivational Speaker
Look, when it comes to responsibility (any type, but especially the big type), sometimes you will feel like you are crumbling under pressure. That's to be expected--or else you don't have enough responsibility on you and you're running low on commitment.
But remember, you will face lulls. I have, especially the past 4 weeks. ALMas faced 3 major issues which stalled our work.
1. We were all confused, and I wasn't doing anything about it. No one knew what I was thinking.
2. We were in the dumps because our potential location never got back to us--so we just stopped working.
3. As the club leader and creator, I ran away form having the hard conversations and keeping people motivated.
How did we respond as a group?
1. I spent hours at night after school work to create process maps and mind maps to literally chart out all the steps our organization had to take so that everyone could see where we were, what work was left, and who could take up what responsibility. It became our central hub for work direction and accountability. You can check out the evolving chart at the bottom of this page!
2. I just spoke with Catherine Corr, or educational consultant in early childhood education. She knows the director of a program on 92nd street that would be open to housing our program's pilot working with siblings of elementary school latino children and families. Score.
3. I got my team together for an all board and member meeting. I told them how I felt, how I fell behind, and how I was tired of running away from ALMas after setbacks and finally ready to run towards it again--and hard! They opened up with their thoughts and frustrations. Then we started coming up with solutions.
Now w'ere back on track. We're creating our first minimum viable product this weekend to showcase for new volunteers, for training new volunteers, and showcasing it to our potential pilot's location.
But you have to understand, this is an entrepreneurial project. Sure, we're in college starting out as a student organization on campus. But that's not our long-term plans. We're going for the big guns, because we believe and know we can reach more kids that way. And given this is an entrepreneurial endeavor, I expect partial lulls, setbacks, but I also expect strength, vigor, and resilience.
It's never too late to be who you should be. You just have to start hating being down on your knees. Because you can't change the lives of those that need if, if you're constantly down for the count. You'll never get up to do anything. And that's love. It's that recognition. It's recognizing that you were made to do something on your feet--and you decide to stay on your feet until you've done it.
