Making progress and evolving your goals to match
We don’t always know how far we have to go. We can’t always clearly see the path ahead of us. Sometimes the best thing to do is to revise, update, or change our goals as we learn more about ourselves.
At the weekend I climbed a mountain. Not figuratively - I literally climbed a 2,600m mountain in the Pirin Mountain range in Bulgaria. This mountain called Donchovi Karauli, in fact:
But do you know what the hardest part about climbing that mountain was?
It wasn’t the fact that it’s a pretty high mountain. It wasn’t the fact that the sun was beating down upon me. It wasn’t the rocks I had to scramble over for the last half. It wasn’t the fact that I’d already walked 8km up some other mountains (though that did contribute).
The hardest part about climbing this mountain was that I couldn’t see the top while I was climbing.
As I pushed myself closer and closer towards (what I thought was) the peak, I could feel my excitement and relief beginning to rise. But when I crested that final boulder, I saw that I still had another 10 minutes of climbing. 10 minutes later, I pulled myself over a ridge, and saw that the peak was actually 50 metres higher. This happened three or four times in total. I decided not to count.
The interesting thing about this experience was that the distance to the peak never actually changed. It was only my perception and expectation of how far I had to go that made the climb so difficult.
And this is a pretty transparent metaphor for working towards a changing or evolving goal.
We don’t always know how far we have to go. We can’t always clearly see the path ahead of us. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to revise, update, and change our goals as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
This is all very present to me right now. As well as climbing a mountain, I also recently defined a new direction for my music. My definition of success has changed, but the way I work towards it has not.
Here are some concepts that helped me to adapt to my evolving goals. I hope you find these concepts useful, especially if you find your goals becoming unclear, or you’re being pulled in a new direction:
Revisit your values: As we move through life, things change. Some things become more important, and others, less. Perhaps you feel less aligned to the values of travel and novelty, and closer to community and family. Take some time to examine your changing values, and update any that don’t resonate with you.
Update your goals: Now you have this new knowledge, your old goals might not serve you anymore. Or maybe you have the same goals, but your idea of success has changed. It’s OK to move your own goalposts to keep yourself pointing in the right direction.
Trust in the process: When you started your journey of working towards your goals, you made a choice to keep on moving forwards. So keep on taking those steps. Take steps in the direction of success, even if you can’t precisely define what success looks like right now. As you learn more and approach your peak, success will resolve and coalesce into a certain form.
Be thankful for the progress you’ve already made: Going in a different direction doesn’t invalidate all that you’ve achieved so far. You wouldn’t have known that this change was necessary without all the work you did beforehand. Even if you completely change direction, just know that this was part of your journey all along - you just couldn’t see that peak at the time.
Open a dialogue with yourself: Dealing with uncertainty can be difficult, especially in areas where you have previously felt certain. In these cases, it’s important to know your own mind - understanding how you feel about your changing and evolving situation will help you to feel secure in the decisions you make.
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In exciting news, the Journaling Edition of the Practising Productivity Planner has just been released! This edition of has all the powerful exercises to help you discover your goals. However, rather than a 12-month undated planner, the Journaling Edition covers three months, but has a dedicated page each day for journaling, and an extra page at the end of the week for deeper self-reflection.
Head over to the downloads page to get the free Bitesize edition and take the Practising Productivity framework for a test ride!
Now, go climb that mountain!
Rich