goals

Goals. I used to make them constantly. I’d write down dozens at a time, taking many hours to plan them out methodically, and obsessing over which ones should take priority. This wasn’t working. After many more hours of deliberation, then I suppose I made it a priority to focus only on several goals at a time; hoping that this would solve the problem. After failing to achieve any of these few goals at a given time, somewhere along the line I realized this wouldn’t work either; and after many more hours of further contemplation, I made it a point to only focus on a single goal at once.

This single goal rule was supposed to take me places. This single goal rule was supposed to make me a star. I was supposed to be a house-hold name by now. I’d get to the point of being comfortable in something, and then I’d lose interest. I primarily saw this in athletics through high-school. I remember making a goal to become a starting shooting guard for my Senior year. Now I was a good shooter (they would send me in primarily against zone defenses to knock down a trey or three, pun intended), but only an ‘okay’ ball handler. And unless I was to have another growth spurt over summer to move up to a small-forward, I needed to get better at ball handling in particular. So, I practiced each day dribbling my trusty basketball around my parents concrete pad (which was supposed to be the foundation for a garage, but apparently my brother and I were a priority, and it was to be used as a multi-purpose sporting area. Thanks mom and dad).

After a few weeks of this, I noticed a substantial increase in my ability to dribble at higher speeds. And I noticed increased speed off the wheels, from the constant stop and go training using a heavy pair of rollerblades. But during this time, I also noticed a substantial increased ability in my rollerblading skills as well. My parents had a backstop that my brother and I used in our front yard for baseball. I took the backstop, and put it on the end of the concrete pad, and had my parents purchase some hockey gear (thanks again mom and dad). Hmm, maybe I should forget basketball, and take a shot at becoming a starting roller hockey player in college instead? See where I’m going with this?

I used to often joke with friends and family “I don’t make any goals for myself, so that way I’m never disappointed by not reaching any”. The reality of this though was I could have filled one of those Five Star binder notebooks with all of the goals I was making. But I learned I wasn’t making goals for myself. No miss or sir. Instead I was making otherwise blank checklists which I was ultimately writing myself off as a failure. They may have been realistic, and I certainly had good intentions upon the reasons to making them, but I was getting nowhere. And with each goal I didn’t reach, came another excuse to bring myself down. To me, I was a failure because I wasn’t the starting shooting guard on my high-school varsity team, or because I didn’t even become a standout on my intramural roller hockey team in college. With all this failure around me, that must surely be all I would ever be, right?

Well, it would be had I not recognized that this was the only road I was paving for myself by having these revolving goals for myself. And like revolving doors, too many times around, you will become dizzy and disoriented. Certainly not in a position of reaching any goals, that’s for sure. Especially if one of those was keeping down your late lunch. Yuck.

By now, some of your New Resolution’s are already wearing off. Like trying to maintain that new car smell without ever properly caring for the interior your car. You can clean the exterior of your car four days of the week, but if you don’t take the time to clean your interior once in awhile, it’ll only smell as good as you do. And I don’t think you want me to go there. Especially if the one resolution you’ve been sticking to is making it to the gym four days a week. But In that case, good for you. I suppose you get a pass on this one.

If you search for ‘goals’ on Google, as of Saturday, January 21st, 8:26 P.M. E.T. you will find 811,000,000 results. Now, unless you have discovered a way to tap into the unused parts of our brain such as in ‘Limitless’, I don’t imagine you’ll get very far. And please whatever you do, if you take anything from this, don’t make a goal to read through as many indexed pages as you can in the next month. I understand that many successful people write down goals compared to those that do not. I’ve even read that most research suggests that that is often the only clear difference between ‘successful people’ and those who are not. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying, is to please learn from someone who has spent countless hours trying to set the perfect goals, so that he could set the perfect life in motion. The only thing I was setting however, was the motion sickness I had from my revolving door from earlier.

The single goal in my life that I have right now is this: “I envision a future self visiting a past self’s’ class on career day back in first grade; unknowing to the past me of course. I want to be able to stand in front of the class, and have that little me grinning from ear-to-ear while hearing about the life that I have led. I want that little me to have so many questions, that the pencil-to-paper can’t keep up with thought. I want that little me to come up to me after the presentation has finished, and ramble off as many questions that made it from pencil-to-paper back to thought. After smiling from how many there are, I would simply say this: Don’t try to change the world. Thinking this, will make you realize how small and insignificant you are, and you will fall worlds short. Instead only hope that the world has changed by what you’ve become. Thinking this, will make you realize you are undoubtedly unique, and that the world you leave behind will have no choice but to better because of it.” How will the world look after your time?