“Raising a child is like putting a cake in the oven and taking it out 30 years later to see how it turned out.”
♥️ Maria
I believe that “raising a child is like putting a cake in the oven and taking it out 30 years later to see how it turned out.” Our youngest son just turned 30, and his older brother is a few years into this remarkable decade. Now I know it’s true, and I have extraordinary proof.
This milestone has me reflecting on what I call long projects—those endeavors that require decades of devotion. While we live in a culture obsessed with quick wins and immediate results, the most meaningful work of our lives unfolds over hundreds of hours, years, decades, and sometimes span multiple lifetimes.
The Sisyphus Moments
During these extended journeys, we inevitably face moments of questioning. Sometimes you cannot gain traction and feel like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll back down. The weight feels unbearable, the vision impossible to manifest. You feel you lack support, and no one seems to care as much as you do. It’s easy to misinterpret these impressions as failure.
As you start to fear losing what you imagined, you also lose sight of the vision, the why, and hope itself. I’ve never encountered a meaningful project—my own or someone else’s—that didn’t include these moments of profound doubt.
Yet here’s what I’ve learned: even when the boulder rolls back, you’re never truly back where you started. You now possess something invaluable—strength, knowledge, perspective, resilience.
The Question of Perseverance
So when should we throw in the towel? This depends entirely on your why, your purpose, your stake in the ground, and whether you have the resources to weather the inevitable storms. The resources may well be other than money, such as energy, unconditional love, time, a mentor of sorts.
This is where discernment becomes crucial, as extended projects come with varying levels of commitment:
Time-Bounded Exploration: Some endeavors deserve significant investment but with clear parameters. I had a client who quit his job and gave himself one year to research his next career move. He had resources for this exploration period. It would have been irresponsible to extend indefinitely, but equally limiting to cut the process short. He knew his why and had staked his ground on finding an outcome he couldn’t yet see but trusted would emerge.
Business Ventures: My own business building took years before I saw the arc of time pay off. In year two, I was afraid I would have to throw in the towel more times than I can count. But what I envisioned mattered deeply, and I held on. As year three came to a close, I had reached that pivot point where my efforts were finally matched with referrals and other opportunities that enlivened and energized me further. Now I can easily hold hope for my clients when they hit their own moments of wanting to quit. That’s when we explore together: Is this fear speaking, or a signal of genuine discernment?
Creative Commitments: Projects like writing and publishing a book may stretch across years, filled with countless moments of doubt. But when purpose runs clear and the end-vision blurs the obstacles, completion becomes inevitable rather than hopeful. My husband is a goldsmith—some of his major pieces take 100+ working hours and countless hours of thought. I can’t count the times he was stuck on how to piece something together or make an elegant lock and would end up literally dreaming of the solution. Countless hours spent in the creative process with numerous opportunities to throw in the towel.
Unconditional Devotion: Raising a child represents a decades-long, lifelong commitment. This isn’t a “let’s see how it goes” endeavor. Ideally, you enter with unconditional love and devotion to carry you through every phase.
Generational Stewardship: Some visions extend beyond individual lifetimes, making us stewards rather than completers. Social justice, peace, medical breakthroughs—we may engage with these causes throughout our adult lives without seeing full manifestation. Would we abandon these outcomes because progress feels slow or impossible? Fortunately, we have visionary leaders and trailblazers who inspire and sustain this work across generations.
The Power of Clarity
When your why runs deep enough, when you have personal heartfelt stakes in the ground, when you’re willing and able to weather storms—that’s when you have the best chance of not surrendering too soon. You won’t give up just before reaching that final hurdle to breakthrough and relief. You’ll develop a felt sense of either “I’ve given this my all and it’s time to let go” or “there’s no way I’m stopping now.”
Full Circle
This understanding of time and commitment shapes everything I do now. Watching our sons step into their thirties, I see the validation of steadfast devotion and the grace that time provides. My vision was that they would come into their own, and they have become who they were meant to be—not to my design, but to theirs.
This understanding shapes how I support others through their own extended projects, whether personal transformation, creative endeavors, business development, or social change work. I know internally that visions take time to manifest, and they do when nurtured with devotion, persistence, and clear purpose.
I can help connect the dots from clarity to purpose to action because I trust the arc of time, the creative process and what’s possible. I can easily hold hope for my clients’ outcomes until they can sustain it themselves. I trust what we both cannot yet see, until it becomes clear enough for them to hold and manifest—sometimes in 100 hours, sometimes months, sometimes they carry.
The art of the long project isn’t just about patience. It’s about faith in the process, wisdom in discernment, and the courage to keep tending what matters most—even when, especially when, the outcome remains hidden in tomorrow’s promise.
What’s your long project?
Have you considered giving up?
What keeps you going?
#PurposeDriven, #LongGameLeadership, #VisionAndPersistence, #TwoFeetInBook