Remember, goals are just made up markers in your head. No one is grading you. No one is punishing you if you don’t hit them. They’re only as valuable as the benefits they bring to your life. So if they’re not benefiting you, then drop them!
Let’s be honest for a second. We are bad at knowing what will make us happy. We are also bad at knowing what is doable and what is not.
We’re bad at predicting what sacrifices we’re willing to make. And we’re bad at accurately determining our own abilities.
Therefore, it’s safe to say that we’re going to be bad at choosing goals and ambitions that actually serve us.
Sometimes our goals end up being way more effort than they’re worth. Sometimes goals we thought would be doable turn out to be impossible. Sometimes we get close to achieving our goals only to discover that we don’t enjoy our goals at all.
This is why it’s sometimes more valuable to fail at a goal than to succeed. Failure teaches us what we should be pursuing instead.
The value of our goals is not in what we accomplish, but in the direction they give us. Goals orient us towards what we’d like in life and give us a little kick in the ass to start moving towards it. But if we discover on the way that actually, we don’t want that goal in our life, then we should drop it!
A lot of people get upset about this. They feel like failures. But, so what?
Failure is normal. Failure is how you learn. Better to fail sooner and pick a better goal now than to spend the next year of your life pursuing something that sucks.
Each year, I set 4–5 goals for myself. I then break those large yearly goals into quarterly, and then monthly goals.
Generally, by the time June rolls around, half of my yearly goals have changed in some way. By the end of the year, I’ve typically abandoned at least one of the goals because I learned along the way that it wasn’t what I wanted. Hell, sometimes I get to August and come up with new goals entirely.
People who show flexibility in their goals turn out waaaaaay better than people who rigidly pursue their goals, especially when those goals aren’t working out.
Abandoning goals that are either unattainable, or just not serving you well, has all sorts of benefits.
Think less stress in your life, feeling more competent, fewer health problems and depressive symptoms and better sleep.
By Maansee Bakhrey
