3 ways to shift your focus back to why you set the goals in the first place
By Mel Fawcett
For the longest time I have struggled with writing down clear goals. Being obsessed with achieving and goals since I was an anxious kid with low self-esteem, I have used every type of journal, scrapbook, vision board, bits of paper, napkins at restaurants, random notes, apps, emails to myself, voice memos – you name it – I have given it all a red hot go in the pursuit of a greater, more fulfilled, self. And to be honest, many of the ways I have tried to set goals have just left me feeling more confused, more anxious and less clear about exactly what I am working towards and how I might get there.
In January this year I set some big business goals for 2021, I wrote them on post-it notes so I could look at them every day to inspire me, I put them in my daily reflection journals, and yet, when I recently went down to rock bottom with my big life goal achievements and became completely lost to their manifestation – it was not those pieces of paper or the clear goals carefully written on them that gave me the boost I desperately needed.
Miyamoto Musashi, legendary Japanese Samurai, wrote in his famous work, ‘The Book of Five Rings;’
“The warrior must scrupulously learn by heart the Way of combat strategy…He must seek to put the Way into practice each hour of every day without tiring or losing focus.”
As Musashi says, we must seek to put the Way into practice each hour of every day, we must keep going and not tire or lose focus – however, what is it that drives that level of focus, ongoing, for years on end? Why should we keep going? Some of our goals, may take months, years, or even most of our lives to achieve, so how can we possibly sustain a level of focus without tiring when the journey is so long and so winding?
What if we were to stop and consider before writing down those goals for the day/week/month/year, the meaning that we are attaching to the journey of their pursuit?
All we have to do is look to famous celebrities, top sports people and heroes we have throughout our lives, to see that setting the “what” and doing the “how” of goals to create a “successful” life – is not necessarily the path to what we truly seek from those goals. How can people achieve such external greatness and yet be left feeling depressed, or sad, when they seemingly have everything they have worked for? Do we set goals merely so we can collect trophies throughout our lives?
As an obsessive goal setter and person with a highly self-critical perfectionist voice going on a lot of the time, I can say with certainty that when all I have is the “what” and the “how” – I have found nothing but disappointment in the reaching of my goals. Has that ever happened to you? You have been reaching so hard for so long and you FINALLY achieve what you thought you must do and yet, something is empty, it doesn’t feel like how you thought it would?
I think what is missing for me, is remembering the “why.” But not just the why of the end result. As in, I want to achieve A because I want to become B. I mean the “why” of the climb up the mountain from A to B. When you think about it, have you ever set a goal for absolutely NO reason? Not likely. No matter what our goals are, in health, fitness, work, study, family, relationships, finances, community – the chances are that they were born from meaning, purpose and even pain. We wanted desperately enough to change our internal world, so we set a goal, to feel different. We wanted desperately to change our external world, so we set a goal, to do different too.
But seeing as the “what” and “how” of our goals can shift and change throughout our lives, as we grow, so does what we aim for, so does how we create action. What is constant, is the meaning we gain from inside ourselves when we rise up each day to meet the journey, unsure of how it will go, or where it will lead us, but that the journey from A to B is the goal. A very dear friend texted me while I was in despair at the size of the mountain between me and my summit of goal achievement and said, “You are one of the highest achievers I know, not because of what you have got, but because you put in so much effort and that is how I gauge success.”
It shifted my mind entirely.
So here are 3 practices that I am applying to my goals review to remember why I went on the journey from A to B, value my effort over my results and find more peace on my path to the summit.
1. Get in a time machine. See now, through the eyes of then.
How quickly we forget where we were at, last week, last month, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. I recently looked over some old photos of when my son was born just 6 years ago. Honestly, it was like I didn’t even recognise that version of myself. I felt so much compassion for what she was going through. I also felt so proud of how far I have come in myself since that time.
2. Growth = Gratitude = Peace.
The forgotten antidote to self-criticism. Sensei Sandra suggested to me recently that I start a gratitude journal, not only for the things I was grateful for in the world around me, or in others, but exactly how was I grateful for how I was growing in myself? An inner self gratitude if you like, one that knows that the journey is long, but we can win every day if we are grateful for what we are evolving into.
3. It has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with me.
How does our own journey help the journey of others? Just focusing only on the “what” and “how” of goals misses this most key point about why we are doing all that work in the first place. Though it is about our own path to expansion, as we all connected, in our families, our schools, our work, our communities – our journey from A to B is always about all of them too. They may or may not come with us as we climb the mountain, but if we dig very deep down into our “why,” chances are that we are not doing anything just for ourselves, deep down, the “why” always has a whole lot of “who” too. And sometimes remembering the “who” can help us find that Musashi focus on the “why,” because Samurai lived a life of service, as warriors for others.
And that has endless meaning on any mountain climb, no matter how long A to B takes.