Tag: goal setting

Don’t Forget to Enjoy the Game While Scoring Goals!

image of a goal and a clock representing living in the moment while setting goals

What is common between someone waiting for their promotion and a grumpy toddler in the car asking every five minutes ‘are we there yet’?

They both keep waiting for a destination, and they ignore the wonderful present.

We have all been there. We wait for the perfect moment, the perfect reward to find happiness and purpose. Once xyz happens, I will be/do abc. We can use this template for any number of instances:

  • Once I get that promotion, I will be happy.
  • Once I get that job, I will be happy.
  • Once I get happy, I will be able to engage with my job in a better way.
  • Once I land that job, I will start living a healthier lifestyle.
  • Once I finish this task, I will give more time to my family.
  • Once I achieve my goal…then…

A cycle of promises that might never end.

Go back to maybe ten-fifteen years ago. Did you have the same goals? And did you make some of these conditional promises to yourself at that time as well? For some of us, this thought experiment may lead to a sense of accomplishment- that we were able to indeed fulfil some of those promises. You may have promised yourself that you will learn time-management better once you finish your exams and have more mental space to make priorities, and you did manage to learn that. You may have promised yourself that once you reach a certain post, you will buy your first car, and you did manage to buy it. You may have promised yourself that once that goal has been achieved, you will become happier and life will become better. Life may have become happier and better for a while.

Did that last? 

Look at us now, using the same template of making promises to ourselves, delaying our happiness. Delaying our sense of gratitude.  Living in stress, and waiting for goal to be fulfilled. Waiting to arrive at the destination, ignoring the journey.

The goalposts of life are forever moving, forever in making. Once we achieve a goal, we build a new goalpost. The significance of the old goal and the goalpost slowly starts to wane.

Once we achieve a goal, we often forget to look around and instead keep looking straight ahead.

Of course, it is good to plan things ahead and think long-term. It is great to have foresight. But it is also necessary to remember Life is always moving ahead, it always goes on. And it WILL bring new aspirations, new landmarks, new promises, new conditions.

And one must not forget to enjoy the process, enjoy the present. Doing so lets us:

  • Enjoy the results of that thing one worked really hard for.
  • Pause and notice what is around us, that may help us to actually work on our processes for our goals in a more precise manner. Imagine worrying so much about who to network with once we get that promotion, and forgetting to network with our present colleagues and seniors who may have a lot to offer!
  • Be happy in the present moment.
  • Find meaning in the present moment and find meaning when life goes in flux. Take the very unfortunate scenario of not being able to achieve the goal for some reason, despite the hard work. Having enjoyed the process, one would have garnered many life lessons, professional and personal development and insights about what could have been done better. One would be developing a healthy respect for their present situation, while looking forward to what lies ahead. Not having enjoyed the process? One would go into an existential crisis of sorts- one might feel that now that the goal hasn’t been achieved, everything that gave meaning to your life may feel like it’s lost. Why? Because the goal had become everything.

So, as we set goals, let us enjoy the process of reaching that goal. The goalposts will keep shifting, and the game shall go on. And the point is to enjoy the game nevertheless.

Resetting: Goal Thinking

The famous metaphor divides our goals into big and small rocks in a jar. But are goals as rigid as rocks?

There’s a famous metaphor suggesting how prioritising our goals, objectives and targets is about filling a glass jar with big rocks first, and then adding smaller rocks, that is, your smaller goals in the spaces that remain. Although a valuable lesson in prioritising, as an article by Harvard Business Review points out, it now calls for an upgrade.

Let us imagine a little scenario.

Vinita has her goals and objectives sorted and divided into big rocks and small rocks. Big rocks for her are: learning and developing her skill-set, gain some experience, work up her income and resume, and immigrate to a bigger city later for better opportunities. Her smaller rocks are: finding time to meditate at least a few minutes a day, finding a hobby that helps with her fitness and learning new strategies to keep her house tidier.

The metaphor of rocks gives us associations of robustness and stability. But they can also make us rigid and fixated on a goal in an unhealthy decontextualised manner. Let us take Vinita’s scenario again.

Vinita has made enough progress and she is ready to emigrate to a bigger city for better opportunities. But she gets a promotion at her current company. The pay is likely to rise exponentially, and what’s more, she might even be offered a house. What happens now to her big rock goal to immigrate to a bigger city?

If Vinita sees her goals as rocks, she is likely to go into a dilemma. An inner tug-of-war between these two opportunities is likely to cause much stress to her.

How about we upgrade the metaphor now?

Why don’t we see goals as moulds of clay instead of rocks? Little pieces which we can connect and bind together by adding water if needed, and shaping and re-shaping them as the situation changes?

The moulds of clay would be the goals. Changes in situation, and realising our core values would be the water we add and the reshaping we do.

Let us go back to Vinita with our clay metaphor. Her goals are now mouldable, re-shapable. The core remains the same – she wants a better opportunity, a better lifestyle. She would get all of this with the promotion. There’s no inner tug-of-war here because she was open to her goal(s) getting remoulded. Vinita also realises now, thanks to her flexible mentality, that what she actually valued as a big rock goal was the result of that goal, and not the goal in itself.

What’s more, rather than goals as single stones, through the re-shaping and moulding, Vinita may end up creating a beautiful sculpture out of the clay of that goal itself!

What we can understand from thinking about goals as mouldable clay is that they are a working ongoing reality. Our vision of how we want our life, and what we prioritise might change. What we thought was important to us might not remain so, or we may realise that what we valued was actually the result(s) that the goal was supposed to give us, and not the goal itself. Keeping a ‘rock solid’ rigid mindset with our goals is likely to blind us to possibilities and opportunities. Keeping our goals open to remoulding and reshaping depending on the changes in the situation and priorities is likely to free us up from the burden to hold onto an outdated vision of our life, and perhaps even surprise ourselves in a good way.