A Love Letter to Goal-Setters

Remember the goals aren't the thing you're really after.

You set a goal to go to the gym. What you're really after is feeling more confident and healthier in your body.

You set a goal to be more open to feedback. What you're really after is to trust yourself to be kind, loving, and connected.

Goals are symbolic.

They are ideas of what will fulfill you and build your confidence in certain areas of your life and with yourself.

They represent what a “good life” could look and feel like to you. But that doesn't mean they are what a good life looks and feels like to you.

You haven't lived that journey yet. You won't really know what that life feels like until you try it on for size (and that's okay).

So it's important to know that your goals are not the destination. They're all just milestones along the way. Steps we take to learn how to get to where we're really going.

And as you set off down that path of completing a goal, you may realize that this picture you painted is not the whole or truest picture of what you're really after.

You'll need to adjust. You may discover nuance and realize gym 3 times a week works for you. You may change your mind and take a different direction altogether and realize the gym doesn't have a place in this conversation between you and your body, right now.

You may never finish the picture you set out to paint but this doesn't mean you painted nothing. An artist never really knows what the work will look like until it's finished.

And life is art. You are creating, in a changing environment and within a changing self.

There's no way to know what will happen because you are always discovering what will happen.

There is no way to know what you'll choose because you're always discovering what works for you.

And in the moments of exception, when we do really know, then those aren't goals.

They're decisions.

Goals implicitly have an element of not being fully in control. Not really knowing how things will go. So whether or not you complete your goals is beside the point. And no, it doesn't mean you broke a promise to yourself.

Because the goal wasn't the promise.

The promise was to work to grow your confidence. To build your trust. To feel a little more empowered and secure. To make a difference. To love yourself a little better, and share that love with the people you care about.

This work is allowed to look like anything, and what it looks like is allowed to change. So long as you're doing something. Creating some movement.

The purpose of the goal is to get you working on something in that direction to discover your next step, but it is not your North Star.

It is not your destination.

Know the difference.

You will not land there, and if you do, you will not finish there.

Either way, you're going to continue on somewhere further.

So set your goals. Pursue them. They are worthwhile, that's why we have them.

And.

Trust yourself to go the direction you need to in the end.

Ask yourself what the goal was really trying to do for you? What's the true picture you're painting? Did you work toward it in any way, even surprising ways?

Whether it was on par with the goal or not is beside the point so long as the rest is true.

Besides, giving your life some room to pleasantly surprise you isn't a bad thing.

This is a large part of what helps us feel alive.

Happy New Year,

Tori