Is it difficult for you to achieve your goals?
Read on for a real-life story about the importance of reaching for a goal, even if you feel a bit unprepared.
Transcription:
So the tip for today is: Finish your goals.
Now, this is one thing I think a lot of us struggle with. We're great at starting goals--January is full of goal setting and things we want to change.
But it's the actual accomplishing or achieving these goals is what causes in us the pull and desire to set and achieve additional goals.
A lot of people set goals the wrong way; they don't base them on their values. And because of that, they struggle with actually creating them.
So you do have values-based goals, and as you're tracking them and trying to achieve them, are you actually staying true to yourself?
I'll tell you a quick story about me. On Saturday, my sons and I decided that--well, I kind of signed them up, but they knew they was coming--I signed them up for a race. And we did a mountain bike race here locally at Beaver Mountain. It was fantastic, with beautiful weather; there was some nice cloud cover.
And we hadn't trained as much as we probably should have. We only trained for about two weeks, but we had been riding mountain bikes in Texas. But the elevation of 7,000 to 8,000 feet is an absolute killer. So we tried to do a pre-ride. And we could tell our lungs just really weren't there. But we were going to show up, and we were going to finish.
Set a goal
Be patient with yourself as you work toward your goal
Follow through and achieve your goal
Review and regroup as you move on to your next goal
So first lap in, I could tell my my 17-year-old son was really struggling. But he came across the finish line for a second lap. And he kept going.
When he finished he finished with a flat tire even though I gave him a pump and he had an extra inner tube. He came across the finish line with a flat tire. I said, "Dude, what did you do?" He said, "About 100 yards back, I had a flat it and it wasn't worth it." He just kept riding on it until he got through. What a finisher!
And I asked him, "Son, what were you doing? What do you think?" He said, "Well, halfway into lap one, by the time we got to that peak, I decided that was it, I was just going to do one lap." But when he came across close to the finish line, he just had a surge of energy and said, "No, I did this, I signed up for it, even though my dad got me into this thing, I'm going to finish."
I had the same experience where on lap one I thought, "I'm good with one lap, I'm okay, I in the old folks' group, that's fine." But I remembered that my son did it, I signed myself up for this, we were training for it, even though we were ill-prepared that I was going to finish. I didn't finish last ,and I actually finished better than I thought I would with the amount of training I had. And the reality is that by the time we finished, we knew we could do it, even if it took longer than we we anticipated.
Sometimes we're just not patient with ourselves. Sometimes we don't prepare as well as we could, or sometimes both. But I do think there is power in finishing, and there's power in just achieving these goals and then improving upon them.
We spent a good half hour talking about things we can do next time to prepare for our next race; we should eat better and we can train better for the next goal.
So I just want to throw that out there. There's power in finishing as we're patient with our progress, and as we need to improve. But we have to start somewhere, we've got to begin, and we've got to finish those little things so we can move on.
I would love to your thoughts.
Live Life on Purpose,
Travis Parry
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