When you have a dream, especially if it is a big dream, one of the biggest challenges is feeling confident you can ever achieve your goals. When a person sets out to pursue excellence in the form of building a company, earning a graduate degree, growing blog readership to 100,000 readers/month, or becoming a pro athlete, the end goal is somewhat well defined, but the steps along the way are not.

Having the confidence to start on this road mean acknowledging that you will face unknown challenges. If you have the proper desire and conviction for your goal, don’t worry. Feel confident that if someone else has done the same thing, clearly it is possible, and clearly, you have the potential to reach the same level also. For many, the hard part is getting started; however, once you have a plan, all you need to do is start with step one.

If you are enthusiastic, it is easy to overestimate what you can do in a day. The first day of work will take you some small percentage closer to your goal. For many it is demoralizing to realize after a full day of hard work, a goal can still be so far away. Luckily, people often underestimate what they can accomplish in longer time spans.

Over time, the days of hard work will fly by and soon you will have accomplished much more in a month or year than you believed possible. I have seen amazing results from my friends and peers building their personal empires in just a few short years.

In order to begin a step by step process, start with one of my favorite activities — brainstorming! Sit down and write out all the steps in as much detail and as explicitly as you can. Next estimate how long you think they will take and estimate when you think you can have each step completed. Then organize them into a flow or sequential order that makes sense to you. Start with a short or easy task that you know will be successful. Having an early win will motivate you to continue on to more challenging work.

When you look back on your biggest successes it will appear that they hardly took any work at all. People will dub you “naturally talented” or “lucky” because they only see the end result. Go back and look at the list you created in the beginning and you will see all those checked boxes (now accomplishments). The point is, that if you want to reach the goals you seek, be like the late Bernie Mac and “just keep doin what you are doin”.