Better late than never?!
Showing up every day can be really hard, discipline is the only tool you need to achieve your goals.
I know, this seems very counter intuitive or even hypocritical from me, preaching about discipline, consistency and showing up every day, while at the same time not holding my promise of writing an issue every weekend… Failing after a mere first week. But I have an excuse, a good excuse, or so I say. This is what we all try to convince ourselves when we don’t follow through our promises. We try to rationalize and find the best possible story to tell ourselves (and sometimes others too) why we failed and why it makes absolute sense that we failed. The problem is that we believe them!
What makes us not achieve our goals?
In reality, it’s a matter of priority. This past week, I have prioritized some tasks over others. I consciously and subconsciously made the task of writing this issue the least of my priority — or at least one of the lowest, I chose not to write this issue. No excuse is needed to describe this behavior. This might sound like I’m too harsh on myself, but in reality I am not. I’m just being realistic, if I want to achieve goals in life, I can’t be “easy” on myself — whatever that means. I need to hold myself accountable, I need to track my progress and define milestones. If I don’t do any of these, my goal will just be a dream, and my dream will be always something that I can do tomorrow.
But that is not all! We need to go deeper
The main reason we don’t prioritize our goals over other tasks, may they be short-term indulgences or just higher priority tasks, is because we fail to realize or define the importance of the goal for us. There needs to be a clear WHY, you need to first define your why like in Simon Sinek’s book, then, everytime you think about your goal you need to start with your why (another good read that I highly recommend)! The reason behind this is that your why will always push you forward when you lack motivation, when you’re at your lowest and start thinking of quitting and giving up. Your why is the reason you’re doing all of this, if it is weak or not well defined, everything will come crumbling as soon as the tiniest seed of doubt starts to germinate in your mind.
In the end
What really matters in the end is that you feel happy, fulfilled and content with your life. If a “goal” only came on a whim and you found out that you don’t really want to chase it, it’s ok. But if, in the other hand, you are miserable and full of regret for a reason related to you not chasing your dreams, this might be an opportunity to finally define your why and start thinking with your why to build a foundation for your goals. When this is done, you can start building habits and systems to be disciplined (more on this on a next issue).
PS. Remember, we all struggle with discipline, finding and defining our why. It is a hard process and the road is going to be tough. But if you keep pushing through you will be able to fulfill your goals. This is what real progress looks like (right) vs how we think it should be (left), life is full of ups and downs.
PSS. Don’t fall into the trap of moving goalposts. Let me explain what I mean by that: The point is not to chase goals for the sake of chasing goals. You will find that when you achieve each goal, you will be as miserable as before and you will just make up a new goal to achieve. Nothing will change and this will be going on forever. Instead, what you can do is : Enjoy the journey, enjoy each and every moment of it, as much as you can. And most importantly : express gratitude. It has been proven scientifically that showing gratitude can be very beneficial in terms of fighting depression and enjoying the moment.
Hope this issue left you more knowledgeable than my previous one. I tried to bring more value to you through this one and I would love to hear your thoughts about it!
And as always, see you next week!
Ismail