I have a semi-complex relationship with goals. On one hand, I’ve often used them to “hold myself to a standard as a means of beating myself up when I’m not there”. On the other hand, they move me forward in life and put me in objectively better situations. My struggle revolves around not wanting to be focusing so hard on becoming something more than I am that I forget all the good my life already is. In the past, I’ve used my self-esteem, or lack thereof, to fuel my pursuits, and hoped that achievement would bring some sort of solace or resolution to all my problems. It’s tough, since in my opinion, that isn’t completely wrong.

You have to do things in life. Period. If I’m not doing things, I feel bad. Too much non-activity often leads to overthinking, obsession, stress and worry. Again, though, if I am constantly enveloped by the achievement of a goal that I forget everything else in my life, it typically goes poorly, or I achieve it and feel worse after, since I no longer have anything to look forward to. Also, basing self-worth off of achievement is a tricky business. While there’s obviously value in achieving things, thinking all of someone’s value is derived from that feels like an over-exaggeration. It’s a balance.

I’m obsessed with looking forward. As a survivalist, I’ll always keep moving and adapting. Of course, this is a good way for life to pass you by, be full of anxiety and never be satisfied. It’s a balance…

So, I believe it’s a combination of both that ultimately satisfies both schools of thought; being intentional about what you want to be doing and recognizing what you already have. BALANCE.

Balance is also a fun one. “What’s the exact ratio of this and that to optimize my happiness or state of being to perfection?”. I always used to pose two things at odds, like only one or the other could be true. What is the BALANCE of achieving goals VERSUS accepting who I am? What is the BALANCE of loving myself VERSUS wanting to be something more?

My favorite question, which leads to one of the closest things I have to a “mantra” would be: what’s the BAlANCE of flexibility VERSUS discipline? It sort of summarizes the whole post here; how do I be myself and become something else while not hating myself? How do I set an intention to become something but be able to bend to the fact that life is not a science experiment with constants and I don’t exist in a vacuum? How do I allow myself to forgive myself when I don’t meet the standard without hating myself, but also, how do I hold myself accountable in times where I truly am “letting myself off easily”?

To me, anytime I pose these VERSUS questions now, I’ve learned to replace VERSUS with AND, since that ends up answering the question. What’s the balance between flexibility AND discipline? It’s not one or the other, it’s both. So ultimately, what’s the balance between flexibility and discipline? Now, I’d say honest awareness. Being able to, at any moment in time, be aware enough to step back and judge your actions, to understand what you need in that moment and to move forward in that direction.

For example, say yesterday, I declared I was going to the gym today, but it’s 10PM, just stopped working an hour ago, my brain is fried, I haven’t eaten, I need to get up at 6AM tomorrow, and need to do things around the house before I go to sleep. I’d want to be able to recognize this context and say “ok, there’s no bandwidth today, but tomorrow you can make up for it”, having the flexibility to still reach the goal, and some amount of patience as well.

Even just from reading this, the “discipline” part of my brain comes out in droves. Why aren’t you committed? You won’t get anywhere without the “grind-set”. Blah blah blah. There’s that camp that can be dismissed away to some degree, but if we’re being honest there’s also some validity to the criticism. Why were you working til 9PM? Could you have managed your time better? Why haven’t you eaten yet? Not all criticism is bad, it can give you an opportunity to refine your approach and succeed more often.

On the flip side, given context, maybe the scenario makes more sense. Perhaps there’s a big fire drill at work that causes late night working. Maybe something happened that justifies the time being managed how it was. Whatever it is, there could be reasons why exercising wasn’t the top priority for the day. There is validity to being flexible based on the dynamic nature of life and its unpredictability. Forcing yourself to meet a routine for the sake of routine without considering broader context could POTENTIALLY be as dangerous as not doing anything. Potentially…

That’s why being honest about it is so important. Being able to, in the moment, assess “am I letting myself off too easily here?”. Or thinking “today was a categorically shit day, I need the space to just go to sleep and start fresh tomorrow”. But also remembering “tomorrow I’m going to do my best to get back on track” and really meaning it. I think it’s about looking at your context and understanding what you need, fundamentally, to sustain your current state, but also move towards what you’re aiming at. There’s also an element of patience embedded in the assessment. Depending on your goal, there could be a more strict deadline where there’s less available flexibility. Do I need to reach my goal right now, or do I have the flexibility to ration this effort over the next three months? Say you’re going to run a half-marathon in January, you start training in October. You’re going to run 3x a week. Maybe there’s a couple of weeks where you could only run 2x a week. Or maybe one week, you couldn’t run at all. If it’s early on and a 2x week happens, it’s probably beneficial to give some amount of flexibility and patience there, since there’s a bit of runway left before “game-time”. On the other hand, if you’re pretty deep into the training schedule and barely squeaking out 1x a week, maybe you can admit the goal was too lofty for your level of discipline and reassess your commitment to the idea of reaching this goal.

Being honest with yourself can be really difficult. It’s not just posing both sides of the argument, it’s having an understanding of where you’re at and what you need given the context. It’s really easy to get swept up in the emotions of not having what you need or want. It’s also easy to type something like this from a privileged place of having wanted/needed and having gotten. Yet, there’s always more to want.

So. What are my goals at the moment? I’m at a spot where I’m setting new ones. I’ve just achieved running my first half-marathon, which was great. My goal was just to complete, as I’d never ran 13 miles before, but ended up with a 9:42 average pace, which I’m also happy with! As soon as I finished, and before the race day, I start thinking about what’s next and how to set up for the next thing. I want to make sure that when I reach a goal that I appreciate it for what it is and not solely look forward to the next thing, but also not stake everything on the achievement of the goal. A balance, if you will. Caught myself again there, thinking that it can only be one or the other. I can do both; appreciate what I have done and look forward to the next thing.

No more beating around the bush. What’s the next thing? I’ll list a few general intentions at come to mind, then they can be redefined into something more actionable as needed. Really, these are just things I want:

1. Record myself playing and singing songs on the guitar.
2. Write songs.
3. Write for No Backspaces.
4. Continue to run at least 1x a week.
5. Some combination of running and lifting weights.
6. Read books.
7. Be more patient.
8. Manage time more effectively.

A real smattering of ideas here. For starters, there’s a combination of beliefs and practices. Some of them build on each other, which is useful. Routine optimization gets me nervous about falling back into old habits, but we’ll press forward with that knowledge.

I love 1-3. Creative output gets me excited and is something I like to focus on. Physical maintenance on 4-5 is less exciting, but is necessary to keep the ship running well. I find trying to optimize exercise gets tricky time-wise, so be conscious of setting a more firm end goal for those to ration the effort and manage expectations. Reading is good, kind of a throwaway one. This feels like it’s more about what could be nice as a state of being, being someone that’s well-read and does that a lot, but I think I’m more interested in creating than consuming right now. Of course it would be good, but I want to focus on what gets me excited and what’s needed; tertiary ideals need not apply right now.

Being more patient. Woof. There’s a lot that goes into that. Much harder to action a personality trait. However, bringing continual awareness to it and setting an intention would be the first step towards it. There’s always meditation…Need to noodle on that more.

Time management. Another woof. Kind of the over-arching theme here. Can ramble on meaning and intention. Very routine-coded. Also sleep plays a big part in this.

Meh. A conversation for another time. I am happy there are some intentions “on paper” now; I’ve been meaning to do that for a bit. Next step will be to package them all into some framework so I can sort out the “feelings management” department of my brain and go from there.