This is why you can succeed.

I truly believe that if you believe in yourself, you can find a way to make something possible.  If you believe in your creativity and strengths, you can create a possibility.  Sometimes it takes research and sometimes it just requires willpower and dedication.   For example, if you decide you want to create a substance that will enable you to holographically project yourself in multiple places while you sit at home and watch a few screens showing what each of the projections sees, go ahead.  Figure it out.  Chances are good that either you can study holographics and videography and then (eventually) figure out a way to project yourself in multiple places at once.

There isn’t one key to success.  I don’t know why that’s a thing.  In order to succeed, you need to have a lot of things together.

In order to be successful, you have to be willing to work extremely hard in order to accomplish your mission.  You can’t be willing to give up after a week (or less if you’re more like me) just because it got a little challenging.  If you really care about your goal, you’re going to be willing to do what it takes to get there.  You don’t have to love what you’re doing, but I can’t deny that being passionate about your goal is gonna help you greatly.  However, if you’re passionate about your goal, but maybe not so pumped about the field of work required to accomplish said goal, you’ve at least got some passion.  You’ll need to realize that this could easily dominate a huge portion of your free time.  Again, if you love what you do, this might not be a huge problem.  If it is, you might consider meeting some people who share similar interests or are at least interesting in what you’re doing.  Who knows, you could end up collaborating on your project with them and getting done even faster!

Having an accountability partner can be helpful if (like me) you tend to become easily enticed by anything shiny or even remotely distracting.  This could mean another project, a new TV show, Facebook, a new idea, a new book, politics, whatever floats your boat.  An accountability partner would (ideally) keep you focused and also give you someone with which to discuss progress or lack thereof.

Setting milestones on the way to your bigger goal can be helpful if you’re geared that way.  Some people love using lists aid in charting progress.  So the list for the day might consist of six things that help achieve a small milestone.  After you reach your 5 small milestones of the week, you might reach your weekly milestone.  After six weeks, you might accomplish your entire end goal.  (The specific logistics of milestones will depend on time management and how well you end up sticking to your goals.)  Setting realistic milestones is imperative.  If you set unrealistic milestones specific to who you are and how you work, you’ll be disappointed with where you are and may very well lose motivation.  Whereas, setting realistic goals will end in small celebrations as you accomplish each milestone.  Positive results trigger positive reactions and better results.  Negative results trigger negative thoughts and decreased dedication.

Believe in yourself.  Please.  If you wholeheartedly believe you can do it, you’re ten miles closer.  People will doubt, people will express their feelings, you’ve gotta be bigger than their feedback and be willing to tackle your goal head on, no matter how crazy it may seem.  If you believe in yourself and your potential, that ought to keep you going for a while.

Patience is important.  I’m groaning as I type this part, but it’s true.  I’m very impatient, but when it comes to my photography, I’m very specific about every exact element of the photo.  I have waited and waited shots only to have them come out blurry.  I’ve stood on my toes with my arms over my head for five minutes taking 30+ shots praying for one of them to work.  None of them did, but the shot wasn’t so great that I couldn’t bear the loss.  I realized there were better ideas to be experimented with and moved on.  Sure, I was kinda mad that I wasted five minutes with my arms in the air just to have all the shots crash and burn, but that’s part of learning and growing.  If you wait long enough, you’ll get another opportunity and it might be a better one than before.  Either way, don’t be afraid to seize the opportunity.  You could end up missing the final code to unlock the last door between you and success.

Don’t overanalyze mistakes.  If you mess up — no, when you mess up, don’t sweat it.  It going to happen.  There will be failures, there will be setbacks.  You will have to do some things over and over.  However, you will learn and it will strengthen you and encourage you to work harder.  In the end, you’ll be glad you did it and messing up won’t even matter if you happen to remember it.  On the off chance that you do remember it, you can use that as encouragement that just because you messed up 37 times, you nailed it on the 38th and that it was totally worth it.

All this to say, don’t give up, don’t be afraid, try new things, work hard, be patient, and don’t worry.