Your goals feed on excitement and alignment
Are you trying to accomplish your goals but have difficulty motivating yourself?
Is ‚getting there’ a constant struggle, and you need to hear the sound of a whip in your proximity?
Or do you try to be more productive and optimized for the sake of being more productive and optimized?
If achieving your goals is a struggle, maybe the problem is not in you but in your goals and how you set them.
Maybe your goals are constructed the wrong way.
Maybe your goals are not really your goals — or at least not your real goals.
We want what we want.
‘Wanting’ is a funny thing.
We may want to want something.
And we may even want to not want something.
But the truth is: we want what we want.
Talking yourself into and out of wanting something is a waste of energy and resources.
What’s more, you are unlikely to succeed in the long term.
You will end up if not unhappy, then at least not fully satisfied.
Are you killing your motivation?
When you settle for something that is not about fulfilling your true primary goals and vision, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and undermining your motivation.
Many people do, and they live decent, possibly even pleasant lives.
So it’s definitely not a matter of survival; it’s, however, about our fulfillment and self-actualization.
Many prefer to give up dreams and ambitions for a safe, balanced, cozy life because they believe it’s the easier way. I would, however, argue that it is, in fact, a much more challenging way.
When you set a goal that you genuinely desire, aligned with what you value the most, a goal that excites you, you will rarely have to motivate yourself to take action.
Ersatz rarely does the trick.
So if you’re not making progress in achieving your goals, check with yourself if they still excite you, whether they are what you truly want.
Or are they just another 5$ t-shirt type of goal while at the bottom of your heart you still dream of something entirely different?
Smaller actions become much easier when they lead to what you truly want
Let’s take an example of a woman who tried eating healthy, quitting cigarettes, and drinking for years without much success.
It was always about finding a better way; sometimes, it was about motivation, and when motivation was running low — it was about discipline.
But then, one day, said woman pees on a stick and finds out she’s pregnant.
If having a healthy child is something she truly values, she will most likely have no problem quitting smoking and drinking alcohol overnight.
Magic? Not really. It’s about the alignment of your true values and actions.
A similar thing often happens when someone falls in love and wants to look their best (whether it’s necessary or not).
All of a sudden, it’s EASY to do a lot of things that seemed impossible before.
Magic? Not really. It’s about having a ‚goal’ that excites them and ignites them.
The more ambitious goal is easier than a lukewarm goal.
Find your WHAT, align it with your WHY, and the HOW will follow.
Make the goal as clear as you can. You’ll have a hard time summoning energy for a wishy-washy dream.
If you only go for things you know how to achieve, you will settle for a life of mediocrity.
There is a vast difference between declaring:
- I think I would like to go somewhere, travel more.
And:
- I want to wake up and see the glistening snow on the Himalayan Range, breathe the crisp air.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
We can bear almost any how if we have our why.
Don’t worry about the how. The how is secondary.
When you find your WHY, you will find your HOW
Start where you are with what you have.
What else do you need to get going?
The best place to start is right where you are, with what you have: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Be objective — and objectively detached.
Think about it as creating a dish you’ve seen in your mind, but have no recipe.
- You have a clear picture of what you want to create. You know what it should look like or, rather, what you want it to look and taste.
- You have a rough idea of what’s involved — even when there’s no recipe attached.
- You then need to check what ingredients you already have and what might be missing. If you need something, you have to find a way to get it.
- You can go to the store and buy it, but you can also borrow some stuff from the neighbor.
- There are many ways to get what you need to get what you truly want.
Many people want their lives to be easy, pleasant, comfortable, and safe.
They limit their goals to what’s been done before.
That’s like booking an all-inclusive trip where you get to see what they want you to see, and your biggest adventure may be an uncomfortable hotel bed.
It’s perfectly fine, just not the most exciting thing to do.
You go from A to B following a clear-cut path in that scenario.
But if you fall in love with something more significant that you genuinely want to create when you think of your goal as your baby, you’re setting ours for an adventure.
A servant at your service.
So what about the mundane, the process over goals, the incremental change, the 10-minute meditation, eating kale, and six glasses of water?
I say: awesome.
Do what you’ve got to do to get where you want to get.
These actions are just tools, and tools are meant to be used to create something else; otherwise, they lose their meaning.
All of these things are just tools that serve your primary goal. It’s counterproductive to buy tools first without knowing what you need.
Staying healthy is easier if you have a child to raise.
Saving money is easier when you know exactly what you are saving for.
Remember that a more ambitious goal is EASIER than a lukewarm goal.