Oftentimes, we find ourselves worried and troubled at our seeming lack of progress, and look to other things to fill the time before we truly “make progress” again. Whatever goal or hobby or livelihood that we are striving for, we often find ourselves stuck in a paradox, where on one hand, we are so far along to what our goal is that we can taste it, and on the other, so far behind that we will never reach that goal in the end.
While I cannot offer a solution to this paradoxical feeling, what I can do is hopefully provide solace with a new perspective on your goals: to look at goals more like building a house, not getting to a destination. We can start to experience our goals on a daily basis. By that I mean that we work towards our large goal on a daily basis, and rather than be off put and discouraged by the fact that we have not achieved that large goal yet, we can look for solace in the fact that we experienced part of the process towards that goal today. What this means is that every day we experience our goal on the microcosmic level, as we complete one, or multiple, tasks that aid us in achieving that goal, and in a way, we experience that large goal on that day, even if we did not objectively complete said goal.
The only thing is that we are so used to this completion dopamine rush, as it happens nearly every day, that it does not even register anymore, as it is compared to the mountain of work ahead of ourselves, and we rob ourselves of the ability to say that we worked towards that larger goal on that day.
We recognize the fact that we are making progress, and yet, we do nothing to recognize that progress, and that is the new perspective in which I wish to inform. The title of the new perspective is not entirely accurate to the idea I am discussing, but more so a revitalization of what we were doing before our dopamine receptors got fried by the instantly gratifying social media that permeates throughout the newer generations.
So, the next time that you do something towards your larger goal, even if it is as minor as changing a single value in a spreadsheet, take a beat, not too long and not too short, to say to yourself, “Yeah, I contributed towards my goal today.”
