A doorway to growth along the hallway of life
The last final words on goals.
{In case you missed it: How we got here. Eff Goals | They are just lines on paper anyway, If not goals, then what? and Goals are not the destination.}
If you made it this far, you now know a few magical things about effing goals: they suck. And they are completely amazing, too.
The long and short of setting goals - do these things:
Do get curious. Do not take your goal at face value. Ask questions and understand why that goal? Look the goal in the eyes. And ask the goal: what will you uncover for me in this struggle to become who I want to be? How do you help me find my purpose?
Do make your goal an aid station. By that I mean, your goal is not the finish line. There is no finish line. This adventure goes on ad infinitum. So instead, look at it as a tent in the woods along a super crazy long race, where you get to eat all the tacos and potato chips, drink some yummy delicious electrolyte beverage, and sit down just long enough to gather yourself, tend to your blisters and then get back out there.
Do go after that goal with everything inside you, and if you fail: good. Try again. Choose another goal. The point is to keep getting back up. Pick another door to walk through.
I recently interviewed Jeff Browning, a particularly successful ultrarunner. He has competed in over one-hundred ultramarathons and has won over seventeen 100-mile races. He is the 2nd most winning-est 100-mile runner in history, and knows a little something about setting and achieving goals. In reflecting on his career, he noted, “I think we all have unique gifts and if we follow what we are passionate about, then the gifts reveal themselves. Slowly, maybe…later in life;” but the point is to follow what pulls you, and if you follow that, and stay true to who you are, who you want to be, the gifts unfold in extraordinary ways.
Browning continued, “it’s like every goal or experience in our life is a door along a hallway. Our job is to choose the next door and walk through it. Whatever lies on the other side is what we have to live through; and that will inform you for the next door. The point is to live out whatever goal, pick up the learnings and choose another door.”
When I started running, someone told me: “It’s not that running gets easier, it’s that you get stronger.” And that applies as much to life and horizontal bar charts {read Part 1 on Eff Goals}, as it does to the sport of running. It is the showing up that matters. It is the learning and growing and failing and getting back up, each and every time, that matters. Every time I achieve a goal, I get stronger on the path to becoming who I am meant to be, who I dream of becoming. I don’t ever reach the destination, I just get stronger in the pursuit. {***head exploding emoji}
As I have heard it said: Live the life that unfolds before you.
If the goal is aimed at becoming who I want to be, then all I have to do is go after it with everything. Go after the failure. Walk through the door. And love it because failure is the learning for the next goal; the next doorway in the adventure to uncover more about who I am becoming; to choose more of who I want to be. And every goal is a chance to succeed or fail, but either way I will be learning and growing towards something else, something perhaps bigger than I ever dreamed.
If not goals, then absolutely… goals. It is in the setting and accomplishing of none other than goals that I find out who I am meant to be in this lifetime.
So eff goals. I freaking love them.
Written by Courtney Sawyer
Art by Becca Williams
