Whatever you decide to accomplish has three stages, whether you learn a new language, build a house or start a business, you have to go through all these three stages in order to have an excellent accomplishment. It has the beginning, intermediate and advanced stages—each with its own characteristics.
The beginning stage: The phase of all efforts and no or little tangible result
The beginning starts with some excitement, optimism about the future and burning desire for achievement of a great goal. These emotions give you energy to start and make the first steps. But still you’ve got to make the first step. While you have the mentioned positive emotions to start, you have also the disturbing negative ones such as fear, laziness and the false need for more information or the right time to start. But once you are beyond the first steps, the positive emotions start fading along the way and replacing with more doubt, fear and even fatigue. It’s no longer the passion of the beginner that gives you fuel to move on but the commitment to finish what you’ve started. If you give up you will lose all the momentum you’ve created so far but to continue, you know that it takes more than just motivation.
If you successfully complete the beginning stage, you slowly experience the presence of some results of your hard work. If you’ve been learning a language now you see yourself speaking with a native speaker good enough to exchange some information. If you’ve been building a house, you have completed the structure and separated each room and you can almost call it home now. Or if you have been working on building your own business, at the end of this stage you see that you are generating income.
Intermediate stage: The phase of tasting success
Continuing into intermediate stage means you like what you’ve achieved and you want to complete it. For this your skills and strategies used during the beginning stage is not enough and you need to upgrade your approach going forward. If you are learning a new language, now is time to spend more time reading, speaking with people, watching movies and listening to radio or music. While it’s easier to do these in your first language, you know that just by memorizing new words you won’t make it to a higher level so further practice is essential for growth even if it’s uncomfortable. If you are building a house, you’ve got to apply different skills to complete it and turn it into a place that you can reside. And if you are working on your own business, at this stage you have to think of how to make it sustainable or scale it up and expand it.
The end of intermediate stage is actually the completion of a good work. It’s a work that now you can enjoy using as an asset and have some return on your investment. Now you can use the language to travel to a country, you can move to live in the house or sell it or rent it and similarly, you can get a decent salary or withdrawal from your company and spend some money on things you don’t need much. But still, there is another stage if you want to complete your mission to reach the summit of your work.
Advanced stage: Going from good to great
Once you are in the intermediate phase for a while you realize that you have three options ahead of you. You can slow down your efforts; enjoy what you’ve build and just try to keep what you have. While even doing this requires spending some energy and effort but it is easier than the second option.
The second option is to move forward and turn your already good work into a great one. If you’ve been building a company, at intermediate stage you are just another company among your competitors in the market struggling to survive. But it is highly possible that you are not happy where you are and you want to reach the top.For this, you need to double your efforts and work harder and smarter to build a great company. If you have been learning a new language, at intermediate level you simply can communicate with some difficulties. But getting to an advanced level where you see yourself close to the level of a native speaker,you’ve got to keep investing with your time, energy and sometimes money to learn more words, improve your grammar and practicing every day.
Off course, there is also a third option that is way less popular but in contrast very common. And that is to lose all your interest and not even try to keep what you have already built. If it’s a new language, you eventually will forget what you’ve learned for the lack of use, and if it’s a business you either sell it or in worst case, you close it down. For the house you probably sell it or otherwise leave it to wear down.
Finishing strong is not the game for everyone, but getting there is so attractive that many try.Only those with strong conviction and perseverance can make it to the top.