Having Goals
I have goals and I like the fact that I do. It makes me feel like I have purpose, that I have some direction I need to follow. However, it often feels suffocating, demotivating, it makes me feel envious of others, it makes me feel that I’m unaccomplished or that I’m falling behind because of I haven’t done enough. These are the feelings of having goals.
But how do you achieve goals. Well you work towards them obviously! It’s always an incremental step towards success and rarely ever an overnight one. Whether it’s career goals, financial goals, or creative goals, it takes work to get there. This brings me to habits. If you want to be an artist they say you gotta draw everyday, if you want to be an engineer, you gotta study the math and science, if want to become a world-class swimmer. Well you go to train and compete constantly.
I Can’t Do It
It’s seriously daunty once you lay it out but the reality is, there are professional swimmers, artists, engineers, and many others in these professions. There are people who have done the work and have made it. They’re successful, confident, and (hopefully) happy. But that doesn’t include you, and that sucks. You have to be the one to start from the beginning and you’re not successful, confident (try to be happy though), yet it’s time for you to the hardest part. Cause guess what, other’s before you did the same.
Point is, there’s a huge mental barrier that makes it so difficult to start on a goal and continue it because every fibre in your being is constantly comparing and belittling every step you make. I realize I kind of veered away from habits a bit but the point is, the best way to reach a goal is build habits towards it but how do you keep those habits when it’s just so mentally demotivating?
If you’re the logical type, it’s hard not to focus on reality that yeah, you might be behind, and yeah that kid younger than you already achieved all your goals years ago. But, if you’re the logical type than it might also make sense to say all those comparisons you’re making, have nothing to do with your goals. Nothing. It doesn’t make you more behind than you were and even if you were satisfied with those comparisons, it doesn’t make you more ahead. You have a goal and you are where are you are. Instead, those comparisons are just there to feed your insecurities and it may be depressing but you don’t need to mistake it for who you are right now.
The First Step
They say the hardest part is making the first step but I’d like to challenge that and say the hardest part is making it to the tenth step. The first dive is tough, maybe you needed to move to a new country, apply to new school, or make a large investment but the great thing is, you have the initial burst of motivation to do it. You’re excited, you took the leap and you’re ready to achieve your goal. Two months later, you’re no longer motivated, you’re dreading over how behind you are, and despairing at the amount you’ve done thus far. This is why things like New Year’s resolution are hard to keep. You set lofty goals for yourself but aren’t satisfied with any of the work you’ve done towards it.
This isn’t everyone and if you’re happy and motivated I’m so happy for you, keep it up! But I think a lot of people can relate to what I’ve said. What do you do?
The Problem
A question to ask yourself is, are you willing to put in the effort to do this? You might instantly counter with, of course! This is my goal, I want to achieve it that bad. But just sit with it and think about how you felt working on it each day. Did you dread that 1 hour gym session you planned to do? Are you too drained after work to put a pen to paper to write your dream book?
It just might be the case that you the the habits you set for yourself are too much for you. Often our first reaction is to call yourself lazy and I don’t want to dispute whether that’s true but instead, just look at the reality of, hey, this isn’t working and I can’t keep up these habits.
Start Small
How about scaling back those goals? Exercise for 30 minutes instead. Just write a few sentences each day. But how am I suppose to reach my goal this way? There’s a quote from Dr. K I’ll paraphrase.
Ask yourself if you’re willing to put effort to something? If no, ask yourself if you’d like to be willing to?
It’s not a crime to start small. Even if it feels as if it’s doing nothing to the bring you that goal, it is. The problem was that those habits you try to set for yourself were too high, be honest with that. But we can still get there! Start small, start with the bare mininum that you’re willing to do. Once you’re comfortable with that, suddenly the next step won’t be so hard. You see people who lift every day or draw every day, how they do it, isn’ t it hard? It isn’t hard for them. It’s just a normal day.
And they got there through a lifetime or getting comfortable with the amount their capable of and slowly scaling that up to where they are.
Be Happy
This is the most important part, be happy with what you accomplished. I don’t care if all you did was make a phone call to schedule an appointment. Be proud of yourself. You made that step, you made that progress. This is in itself a skill. Too often do we turn the positive things we do immediately into negatives cause “it’s not enough”. But you don’t only want to work on tha things that bring you to your goal. Even more importantly, you want to train yourself to be happy working towards it.
If your goal is to be an artist, the truth is, the work never stops, there will never be point where you can just stop practicing and say you’ve ascended to the next plane and there’s nothing left to do. Besides if there was truly nothing left to do, what was the point? Just do nothing now.
You see sometimes kids who are forced to play a sport or an instrument and grow to hate. They could’ve made it far, they may have even been a prodigy, but they grow up and never touch it again because they never learned to enjoy it.
Rushing something and forcing yourself to do something shouldn’t take precedence over your ability to enjoy the process cause the truth is, if you’re able to enjoy working towards something, that is the greatest key to success.