So there I am. First thing in the morning. Coffee in hand.
Stepping on the scale…stepping back off the scale and putting down the cup of coffee. Stepping back on the scale.
Stepping back off the scale. Taking off shoes. Stepping back on the scale…
Looking at what I’m wearing – could they really weigh that much?
Reality.
How many of can relate?
Gained weight. No energy. No motivation. And certainly NOT going to a smelly gym miles from the house!
Food? Pthhhp! My stomach growls. I grab the first thing I see to shut it up.
Meh. So it’s a donut and coffee. Or maybe a piece of cheese. Or a leftover of some tasty sort…
What does that matter?
Well…
A lot, as a matter of fact.
The body is made up of many parts. If one of those parts is neglected, the rest fall apart.
We are made up of psychological, physical, and spiritual pieces.
Let’s take the psychological part first.
Your boss just told you to get a project completed by Friday. It will take you five days to accomplish, but he let you know on Tuesday. Nice.
You freak out. Sleep and eating are pretty much put on the sidelines. That project HAS to be finished by the deadline or you’ll be out looking for another job!
The emotions and thoughts race in your head. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Not even your home – the body you live inside.
So the body gets hit with the stress of trying to manage this latest threat to it’s survival, relying on the information the freaked out mind is sending it.
And, eventually, you meet the deadline…then lay in a comatose state until Monday.
What if the physical is going spastic?
Ever stubbed your toe? Or smashed your thumb with a hammer? Or had a cat hair in your eye? The resulting pain pretty much obliterates anything else.
Food? Water? Sleep? Not really on your radar at that moment. The body is fixated on the trauma while you try to figure out how to get it to settle down – or take the pain away.
By the time it is over and the body regains some semblance of regulation, your worn out. Mentally, emotionally, physically.
Okay, so what about a spiritual crisis? That shouldn’t matter, right?
Not quite.
Remember I said that a human being is made up of three parts? This one is probably the most critical component. It is where you find yourself, and your purpose. The “who” of who you are – the very essence of your being.
A spiritual crisis would be [feeling] like [n]othing you do seems to be right or have any meaning.
If that’s messed up, the other two don’t matter.
A spiritual crisis would be something like having a feeling of despair. Nothing you do seems to be right or have any meaning.
You’ve lost your direction and are aimlessly wandering, filling up the empty spaces inside with relationships, distractions, things, activities that really don’t help improve who you are but keep the chill of emptiness at bay.
That’s a spiritual crisis. And most of us don’t even notice because we’re too busy.
So how do we balance all of this out?
We have to take a step back. If we are so busy, or worse, stressed out, we’ll never feel like we can take the time to figure this all out.
After all, we have bills to pay, kids to feed, work to do, and we, the most important component of all of this, don’t matter.
Someone once told be a long time ago, if you think you’re irreplaceable, you’re only fooling yourself.
If you got fired, quit your job, lost your relationships and friends – any of it, and think “they’ll miss me”, think again.
You are replaceable. Nothing you are killing yourself doing will make a hill of beans if you disappeared.
So what difference does it make?
It makes a lot of difference.
Your attitude toward life makes a difference.
YOU make a difference.
“But you just told me I’m replaceable!”
Yes. In corporate life and in personal life, everyone can move on from our relationship with you.
But can you move on from you?
“You can’t escape from what you are.”
Vincent Cassel
But the difference is in our perspective.
Do we really care that much about what others think about us? Should we really care?
The bigger question should be, “are they so important to you that you would be willing to give your life for their sake?”
Do we really care that much about what others think about us? Should we really care?
Even more, “if I’m not important enough to them, why am I hanging around them? What gain is it to me to be used like that?”
Think about it. If they don’t care about you, are they really your friends? Is the money you’d gain by a working at a miserable job more important than you are?
And forget about corporations. To them, you’re just a number.
Aren’t you worth more than that?
And what does all of this have to do with goal setting?
Quite a bit, actually.
It took over two years after I quite working for a corporation to realize that I actually had a purpose. I had a life outside of that miserable job.
It took over two years after I quite working for a corporation to realize that I actually had a purpose.
Yeah, the money was great. But that’s the only part I miss.
No one cared that I left. No goodbye’s. No “sorry to see you go!” No “you’ll be missed.”
In fact, if anything, the spot left open probably gave infinite relief to those I worked with anyway.
No one cared.
I felt that I’d lost a piece of myself…
But I did. I felt that I’d lost a piece of myself, and all the irrecoverable time spent on organizing and streamlining projects that were wiped away at the first opportunity.
So I had to find out who I was. And that took structure, time, and rest.
Above all, rest.
The next stage of my life…
Being away from decades of stress, pleasing others, meeting deadlines, it was unnerving to find myself bewildered and directionless.
I had to do something. I knew I had a purpose.
So I set aside three months to do nothing.
I scrolled YouTube, watching things that weren’t important. I read books – a lot of books.
And I tried to find ways to figure out what I’d lost in all those years of people pleasing and money making.
I knew there was something more in life than all that.
So I began to find out what I’d forgotten.
Remember the book, “What Color Is Your Parachute”? If you’ve never read it, get a copy and write out the lessons inside.
The first time you do it, it will be hard. But you’ll quickly realize that you’ve lost your way – your dreams – your passions along the way.
And you’ll be able to write out what they were all those years ago.
I did it again. And compared all the writings to what I’d done decades earlier.
I discovered that what I wanted to do, what I dreamed of doing, loved to do, hadn’t changed. But the circumstances I chose circumvented their success.
And I now had the chance to change all that.
So I started a blog.
It wasn’t a very good blog.
It got way off track…a lot.
Didn’t have very many followers.
And I messed it up…a lot.
At the beginning of this year, I was ready to give it all up. But something inside said to keep going. Add on. Revamp. Redesign.
So, I did.
And here it is.
I don’t care if no one reads it.
And I don’t really care if it never gains momentum (although it would be really great if it did!), but it gave me a purpose and direction that I’d been missing.
And the opportunity to do it has given me something more.
Connection with people in a way I never thought possible.
But I couldn’t have gotten here without setting goals.
Once I figured out the things I loved doing and could reignite that love of them (like writing), I had to have a goal set out to make that dream possible.
So I tried using the old tried and true methods that held everyone back for decades, then found this method while perusing YouTube. A lot of influencers used it, and it incorporated everything that I knew would work for me.
Goals…
Yup, goals.
Man does not live by wandering around doing nothing for no reason. Innately we know that we have to have some sort of reason to exist.
But if we don’t know why, we’ll never have a target to shoot for.
So the first goal is to find out what you’re good at. What do you do well.
Find out your dreams that all went by the wayside for the sake of the almighty dollar.
What did you want to be when you grew up? Do you even remember?
Start by setting simple goals.
Take a class in art. The creative side is usually the first part of us that we discard while trying to advance in our careers – or care for others. We neglect a fundamental part of our existence by throwing that away.
Get it back. Learn to enjoy life. Take a year off, if you can afford to. Or at least cut back your lifestyle and desires to start giving yourself time to breathe.
Write down a single simple goal. Like painting a picture (or whatever strikes your fancy). Give yourself 30 days to do it.
And then don’t worry about anything else. Just focus on that one goal.
Break it down into weekly steps to meet your self-imposed “deadline”. (It’s okay if you miss that mark. No one will fire you for it.)
If you need to remind yourself of the steps you will do to make it, break it down further into daily steps.
For example…
Let’s say you want to paint a “Paint by Number” piece of artwork. It’s pretty. And you’d enjoy displaying it above your couch so everyone can see just how well it turned out.
Then the dread of pressure comes on you.
“30 DAYS?”
Don’t worry. Try this.
Every week, I’m going to pick two colors to fill in.
That’s all. Just two colors.
Then every day, break down how many spots you will fill in each day for only that week.
If you don’t make the number one day, that’s okay. You’ll probably do more another day instead.
And keep going.
Keep track of your steps.
Maybe create a habit tracker (of your choice) or use something like the Finisher’s Journal (which I’d recommend once you’ve figure out a really big long-term goal, but the idea is the same) to help keep on task. (You can use mine here…)
The key is to give yourself the grace to do something you used to enjoy at your own pace.
The key isn’t to push yourself to achieve your goal.
The key is to give yourself the grace to do something you used to enjoy at your own pace.
No one is watching. This is only for you.
Then when you’ve finished your goal (even if it’s three weeks late), reward yourself with something that you’d enjoy!
That is the purpose of goals…
To pull you on track toward something meaningful, purposeful for yourself.
You weren’t created to be stepped on, used, abused, dismantled by someone else’s callousness. Nor to be considered nothing more than a number or worker bee by people who don’t even know your name.
You are better than all that.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. –Eleanor Roosevelt
That is why it is important to choose your friends wisely, and your work prudently. If it doesn’t help you grow into the full human being you are, then none of that matter.
Remember. It isn’t selfish to care about yourself.
It is more selfish to not do so.
What do you think?
Do you have anything to add? Any experiences you’d like to share about your journey along the way?
Post them in the comments so we can learn from you!