A few days ago my six-year-old son asked if we could make homemade whipped cream. Apparently he had seen a chef complete the task on a cooking show and felt we could replicate the result. Although I had made it before, my son had never watched me do it and so I welcomed the opportunity for a quiet afternoon activity, as we have had a summer filled with broken bones and stitches, and I thought it was entirely reasonable that we could make whipped cream without a trip to the emergency room.

We gathered our ingredients, quite a simple list: heavy whipping cream, sugar, vanilla. We gathered our tools: a mixer and a glass bowl (it helps if both are chilled beforehand).

As my son watched me beat the ingredients together, and beat the ingredients together, and beat, and beat, and beat the ingredients together, he couldn't believe how long it was taking for the mixture to whip up! It looks like nothing is happening for a very long time, and then suddenly, all at once, you have a bowl full of your fluffy goal.

After enjoying our tasty treat atop some fresh strawberries, it occurred to me that this is often how things work for those of us trying to reach a goal in our professional lives.

You can have all the right ingredients. You can use farm-fresh cream. You can have the best vanilla that money can buy. You can make sure your bowl is chilled and conditions are perfect- but the secret to a successful whipped cream is also the secret to a successful career. It's time.

This isn't an easy one for me to accept. Because you can't brainstorm time. You can't croudsource it. You can't buy it. You can't earn it. You can't work really, really hard and get it to pass faster. Because time isn't a supply, or an ingredient or an idea. You can't jot it down, pin it or instragram it. Time is a gift. One that we have to accept and be grateful for everyday. Instead of resenting that our dream isn't coming to fruition fast enough, we need to be mindful of enjoying the process.

Often we throw ourselves into our passion and see not much coming of it, maybe even for a very long time. But make no mistake. Your fluffy bowl of success could be just around the corner. And if it is, by all means, lick the spoon. You deserve it.

** If the mere sound of the word "failure" makes you cringe- see this post.