While You Wait: 3 Steps to Managing Your Thoughts and Emotions While Striving for a Big Goal
Accomplishing goals is challenging. That’s why we like it. When accomplishing a goal is easy, say, wanting a glass of water and then acquiring a glass of water, the joy we feel from accomplishing it is small. When a goal is difficult, like earning a degree, the pride we feel in succeeding is many times more intense than for something easy. Our lives have a combination of goals of all kinds, some big, and some small.
The kind of goals I want to discuss are the big ones, the goals that require multiple months or years to accomplish. Working towards long-term goals is what we might call our “life’s work.” Accomplishing a long-term goal is usually life-changing. Paying off your mortgage, receiving your PhD degree or, even (especially!), completing a prison sentence will result in your life becoming very different. I, myself, love long-term goals and relish the act of striving towards their completion.
The inherent challenge with long-term goals stems from the fact that they are long-term. They take a long time. During the years spent working towards a long-term goal, doubt and impatience can creep into our minds. Time spent waiting to complete a goal can be painful, especially without a strategy to cope with the pain. Here’s one way to plan your quest.
3 Steps to Managing Your Thoughts and Emotions While Striving for a Big Goal
1) Know the Vision
Most people don’t know what they want out of life. They usually have a general idea, “I want to be happy,” “I want to be rich,” or “I want to be loved.” Very few people know the details about what they really want. One of the advantages of long-term goals is that many of them have their own specific completion goal. When you pay off your mortgage, the balance on your loan will read 0. You will certainly know when your mortgage is paid off. It’s not vague. The same holds true for receiving a college degree. Graduating is very specific. Big goals are easier to describe than self-directed or short-term goals. This is good.
Regardless of how easy it will be to name your goal specifically, deciding on your goal is a required step. You must know what you want. Take time to decide. Once you start off on your long-term quest, you will be on that quest for an extended period of months or years. And, since we simply don’t live long enough to complete too many multi-year goals, it is wise to take care in deciding what your next big goal will be. It will be a big commitment and one of only a few like it in your whole life.
2) Overcome Challenges to the Vision
It is natural to encounter some doubt on the way to any goal. Worry is our mind’s way of trying to protect us. Because our important goals are, well, important, it’s natural for our minds to create even more worry about the topic than usual. This doesn’t mean that those doubts need to be mentally or emotionally disruptive. Perspective is key.
If you remember that all people feel doubt at some point and that your mind will create doubt regardless of the reality of any situation, you can more easily dismiss those doubts as just natural machinations of the mind. The mind is going to worry no matter what. So, how significant are each of those worries? Worries are not significant at all. Fears come and go even when there is nothing to worry about. Worries are cheap. They are everywhere. They are in everyone. Does something so cheap and common deserve your attention? When you realize that the answer is “no,” you can begin to train yourself to dismiss doubts and worries on the way to your goal.
3) Act like the Vision is complete: Doing Your Part
Aside from passing your college tests or making your monthly mortgage payments, is there anything you can do while waiting for your long-term goal to arrive? Yes, there is.
A strategy that has been very successful in my own life is to “Live like your goal is complete.”
This strategy has three benefits:
1) Behaving as if your goal is complete will influence people around you to help you accomplish your goal.
You will have an easier time being named CEO of the company if the other people at the company notice you behaving like a CEO. Behaving like an attorney before you pass the Bar Exam will give you a running start on your career once you pass the test.
2) You can give your new life a tryout.
If you act as if you have accomplished your goal before it’s done, you can see if you like the result of your quest. If you aim to get a job on a fishing boat, waking up at 4:00 a.m. will give you a taste of your new lifestyle. Smelling like fish before starting the job could also give you an idea of how your spouse might react to your dream aroma.
3) Acting as if your goal is accomplished feels good
Rather than worry or grow impatient, pretending that you are already living your new life can be joyful. Since everything moves through the prism of our minds, how we decide to perceive the world is a big decision. An attorney feels like an attorney because they have decided that they are an attorney in their minds.
Also, since your plan is solid, you can assume that accomplishing your goal is just a matter of time. If you usually get good grades and have time scheduled to study, why would you doubt your upcoming degree? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t FEEL as if you have your degree already. This is another reason why our choice of goal is so important. You will feel more doubt and have a harder time living as if your goal is already real if your goal is unrealistic. As always, preparation will yield good results.
Big goals are awesome because they are big. The harder it is and the longer it takes, the more pride you will feel from its accomplishment. With a little strategy, you can also feel great on your way to the prize.
Burak Uzun is an award-winning writer and a Certified Meditation Teacher.
Burak Uzun also co-wrote a feature film called Team Marco, which was featured in over fifty film festivals around the globe and was distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
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