Ever notice how at the end of a year or at the beginning of a new one there’s all this talk of setting goals. It can be very intimidating. There’s all this pressure to achieve stuff and live a purpose-driven life when if you’re like me you’d just be happy to achieve a state of 60 mins uninterrupted blissful zen each day! The goals may center around getting fit and healthy, buying a new car, finally getting that extension for the house, taking your career to the next level, whatever it is, it can be… well…..a lot!
It’s not to say goals are bad, quite the opposite, but how we feel about them and how realistic they are can make a world of difference in terms of how close we actually get to achieving or even getting started on them. When I first started thinking about writing a blog my immediate reaction was to sigh very, very loudly, you know the kind where you immediately go into a slouch and sink into yourself, yeh you know, oh yes and there was lots of eye rolling! Thankfully there was no one around to see this display of amateur dramatics.
But Lady Q you think, surely as a psychologist-in-training you must have lots to say, more importantly lots of really deep profound things to say. That’s a lot of pressure! Truthfully, some days I’m pretty profound but not every day and certainly not for an entire day, that would be far too exhausting, it’s more like every once in a while, I may get a profound moment that I’m profoundly aware of 😏
And what does this have to do with setting goals you ask….everything! The thought that brought on the sigh was “Oh no, I hate writing, it takes forevvvvvver!” That thought was then accompanied by a feeling of exhaustion but the REAL question is what was really behind the thought. It was “I’m not good enough” “Will people like it?” “What if I run out of things to write about?” and on and on it went.
Ask me to talk and I’m your person, in fact you may need to ask me to stop! But the constant editing I do with writing…..aaaaargh! It’s almost as if each backspace and delete represents me second-guessing myself! Even though I know this is part of the process and that virtually no one writes a piece without some level of editing. It doesn’t matter, in my mind it’s this thing I get worked up over and become extremely irritated and frustrated (emotions!) until I can get it done. Such is the power of thoughts!
Have you ever had something you needed or wanted to do but you kept putting it off because it felt so big and scary and exhausting even before you got started? And as if that wasn’t enough did you find yourself already convincing yourself that it wasn’t going to be great anyway? Say helloooo to self-sabotage! Been there! The lesson here dear reader is simple, set the goal and keep it simple or you’re in danger of setting yourself up to fail. Then just start!
As Desmond Tutu once said “There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. “In other words, if some random person (work with me) challenged you to eat an elephant you’d probably laugh and say hell no! The elephant is that big scary thing you haven’t gotten to yet. But if you were to break it down into manageable bites it could actually get done. Now it’s important to be realistic. It’s unlikely you’d be able to get through an entire elephant in 1 day (although I’m pretty sure I could reasonably get through an elephant-sized chocolate bar in less than 24 hours!) but you may be able to do so in 1 month.
Take this post I’m writing. I set my timer for 15 minutes. In other words I simply got started by giving myself a very doable smaller goal “Write for 15 minutes” What’s 15 minutes right? OK so I want to have this post done in 3 weeks’ time. That’s pretty doable, 15 minutes a day is not too scary. Guess what? 45 minutes later I’m still writing and I’ve written this in one go! So now when I get up from my laptop I’m going to feel super proud of me. Had I let my emotions get the better of me I may not have even gotten started at all and kept putting it off. And so I find myself at the end of this piece! Hmmm…perhaps I can do this after all 😊
Until next time my request to you dear reader is to simply get started and don’t judge what that looks like. Drop me a line and let me know how you’re getting on, I’d love to hear from you.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with what is one of my favorite reminders of why it’s simply good to just have goals.
” A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
Bruce Lee