Welcome to 7 Minutes Sunday on the Switch, Pivot, or Quit podcast. I'm your host, Ayana Angel, and we're going to spend the next 7 minutes together getting you filled up with inspiration and goodness to get your mind primed to achieve greatness as you enter the week ahead. Thank you for joining me today, first and foremost, and today we're going to be talking about this simple concept that I, it just came to me one day and I just thought of it and I don't even know where it came from, but I wanted to talk about it with you guys and share it with you guys. In the words, respect the process, expect the work, came to my mind.
That's what came to my mind. And I think it's because as we look around, we see so many things taking shape and happening for people, and there's this assumption or this illusion that everything's great, everything all came together for them in maybe this miraculous amount of time, and we can't really always see the work that goes into some things that develop to be great and awesome that we see on the outside. We don't always see the work that goes into it. We don't always see the process.
And now more than ever, people are trying to capitalize on showing you more of the process, but sometimes that's even, you know, altered in a way for entertainment. So the words, respect the process, expect the work, came to me because I think it's something you really need to be more mindful of. When you decide that you want to start a garden, and you plant the seeds for your cucumbers, and you plant the seeds in the right season, in the right time, for that seed to then grow and flourish, and for you to be able to pick that crop of that vegetable, of the cucumber, when the time is right and when it's ready, right? We know what that life cycle for plants and vegetation and things like that looks like.
It's not thick. It's not overnight. But if you do the right things, if you nurture it, if you water it, if you pour into it, if it gets the proper sunlight, if it is planted in the proper type of soil that will help to foster its growth, then you know it's going to grow into something useful for you, potentially. So it's the same way with pouring into the process of developing ourselves personally and professionally.
So we have to respect the process and understand that it is a process. It's going to take time. It's going to take investment from us. It's going to take investment, not just monetary, but also our investment of our time, our investment of our intention, our investment of our thoughts and our resources being poured into it, and into ourselves.
Let's say we have to know that this is what it takes for us to be the best that we possibly can be. No one just wakes up being an expert in things. No one just wakes up having this crazy amount of skill set. Most people don't.
The people that do their geniuses, we pretty much find out that their geniuses by a very young age when some things are just innate and it just comes to them. The rest of us, we have to put a lot more work and effort into nurturing the talents that we really want to see come to life and nurturing the type of person that we want to be and nurturing our greatness. So it takes work. And I know that we all know this, but I just wanted to spend some time on the fact that it does take work today because I think that sometimes we just get so caught up in what we want the end result to be that we don't give ourselves a pass on how much work it takes to get to where we want to be or how much we're going to have to sacrifice to get to where we want to be.
A lot of times there is sacrifice involved. And if you're willing to do the work, but you're not willing to make the sacrifices, sometimes you have to ask yourself, too, what kind of results are you truly expecting? If we're expecting results of greatness, if we truly want to see greatness, we have to not only respect the process, but understand the process. If we're willing to do the work, how many people can truly say that when they decided that they wanted something very specifically, they wanted X, Y, Z, that they really took the time to find out and find somebody who had achieved X, Y, Z, or even something remotely close to it and really dig in and find out and understand every single thing that it took for this person to get to where they are.
Let's use somebody like Martha Stewart, for example, because Martha Stewart has been through some ups and downs and some challenges that she's been around for a long time. And Martha Stewart didn't just come out of nowhere. Martha Stewart had humble beginnings on local television. And then if you really took the time to research her and you wanted to be like Martha Stewart, let's say you're in games, you want to be of the caliber of a Martha Stewart.
If you really took the time to research everything that she did to get to where she is, the types of relationships she had to build, the types of skills that she had to build for herself, the type of knowledge that she had to gain, the type of offerings that she had to be ready to present to the world, the way that she might have been prepared for certain opportunities when they crossed her path. If you really took the time to delve into what makes people great in their own right, I bet you would see that, eh? You might not be doing enough or as much as you could be to get you where you want to be. And you probably also realize that these people sacrifice a lot.
So are you ready for the sacrifice? If you really truly want that greatness, get ready for the sacrifice. Start this week. Start putting in the work.
Start getting ready to prepare for the sacrifice. And I really, really hope that that greatness is in your near future because you're willing to work for it. So thank you for hanging out with me today on this seven-minute Sunday. I hope that my words were encouraging for you.
And as always, keep killing it.