We’re about a quarter of the way in to 2015. Did you make any New Years’ resolutions? If so, are you still working on them? Did you completely ignore them? Or did this post just remind you that you’d made some?
Goals may be far-reaching and really challenge your personality, your self, and your soul, e.g., “I’m going to write my first novel by the end of the year.” They may be smaller but just as important, e.g., “I’ll eat breakfast every morning.”
It’s normal to get frustrated when striving for your goals. Roadblocks show up, and you may even find yourself questioning the commitments and sacrifices needed to achieve your goal. This is normal, and in the end, only you can make that decision.
However, before you see each roadblock as potentially stopping you dead in your tracks, ask yourself this: Is the road block like the ones in The Road Runner, where Wile E. Coyote would crash through and fall over the edge of the cliff and have to admit defeat once again? Or is it more like a red light, just asking you to stop while a few other things happen first?
Not achieving goals can be due to circumstances beyond your control. But remember, you’re human: we humans can often change the circumstances to suit our needs. Let’s say you’d been saving up for a new set of high-quality paintbrushes, but once you were ready to buy them, they’d gone up in price? You have a few options:
- Continue saving until you have the right amount set a side.
- Sacrifice enough other expenses so that you can buy those paintbrushes now.
- Find a way to earn the extra money needed to buy them sooner than in #1.
- Borrow money to buy them.
- Quit your goal.
Clearly, not all of those options are optimal. But do you see my point? When your goals aren’t working out the way you were hoping they would, take a step back and figure out what your options are. There are very few goals that are not achievable: it’s simply up to you to decide how you handle your challenges.
