You’re good but not that good. No matter how good you are, you are limited by the fact that you are one person. The way to multiply your impact is to lead, to duplicate yourself, to get the other pieces of the puzzle by building your team with people who are strong where you are not. Earlier in my life I would fall into the trap of thinking I had to do it all myself. Call it perfectionism, ego, pride…all just words that had the same outcome. I thought no one could do it as good as I could, and sometimes I was right. But this thought was the prison that was holding me back from growing. It held me back from growing my company, because there is only so much a one man show can accomplish. It held me back from growing as a person, because if you are not challenging your beliefs you are limiting yourself.
Side effects of thinking you have to do it all yourself can be overwhelm, overload, stress and breakdown if you don’t wake up and realize what you are doing to yourself. You can get pretty far on sheer force of will, but eventually that “force” will break you. The break can come in the form of being surly with people, getting physically ill, breaking out, gaining weight, angry outbursts, that nightly cocktail…Maybe you are not like me, where it was hard to ask for help. But if you are, there is hope. You can open your mind to the belief that you can do more by doing less. It’s true. I am proof. Once I really opened myself up to getting help, the stress lifted, the dream got bigger, the clouds shifted and there was the big bright sun.
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock