Nobody said it was gonna be easy

I've been having a think about the world we live in at the moment and how easy everything is becoming for us. We no longer need to actually 'talk' to our friends and family when we can text and email them instead. We don't ever have to visit anyone, now that we have access to Skype and webcams. And should we decide to partake in none of the above, we can still be clued up as to what people around us are up to with the likes of Facebook and Bebo. Video shops are a thing of the past with Lovefilm and Blockbuster offering a delivery service and there are takeaways of every variety on every street corner, should we choose never to cook for ourselves again. More people than ever are hiring cleaners due to a lack of time. Tesco and Sainsburys have never been so busy, bagging up and delivering other people's groceries. Birthdays? Christmas? No problem, not with websites such as play.com and findmeagift.co.uk

This is the society we live in. There is barely anything that other people or computers won't do for us. But I'm not convinced this is a good thing. Apart from the obvious things such as obesity increasing and children's communication skills decreasing, I'm more worried about how we can achieve our future goals with the ethos of; get online and it'll be done and dusted in 5 minutes.

It is crucial that we develop in a logical, step by step manner. Think of a baby who learns to roll, sit up, kneel, crawl, stand, walk then run. It is not possible for the baby to miss any of these steps. We've all heard the expression 'don't run before you can walk'. I think it should be 'you can't run before you can walk'. This is also the case in adult development. We cannot make shortcuts when goal setting. We must look at everything that needs to be achieved and then do so bit by bit. This helps us be confident with who we are and what we are doing.

By not following a natural development pattern, we are not educated enough to achieve what we have set out to and so destined to fail. To fill the gap, we quite often just fake a role of someone who knows what they are doing. If we pretend to be someone we are not, we become pressured and eventually are found out. This then effects our self esteem. We begin to believe we cannot do anything as we have tried and failed in the past. Our problem being, is that we have not taken all the steps to get to where we want to be. We have tried to get there too fast and so missed key learnings along the way. It doesn't work because it can't.

We learn from the questions we ask. Make sure you are questionning others and drinking in their knowledge. Ask yourself questions about your own knowledge or explore who you truly are. Imagine, you are 16 and in a maths exam. You don't know the answer to a number of questions and are likely therefore, not to pass. You look back on your journey and wander why you said nothing when the teacher asked if anyone had any questions. If only you had raised your concerns then. If only, when you were meant to be studying you didn't listen to your ipod instead. If only you had taken the time not to bypass the important stuff in the hope you could 'blag it'. You can't pass because it is impossible. The important steps to this success were missed out.

So, the world of ease we have created for ourselves only makes the other stuff more challenging as we have lost the motivaton and drive to do the things we really want. Once we discover what these things are, we want it quick, easy and now. But remember, the things that have taken longest and required most effort to achieve are the most rewarding in the end. Don't be put off by past failures. Sit down, work out what it is you want and work on a realistic plan of attack. No shortcuts - you will only get lost and end up having to retrace your steps to where you started.