Ever notice that once you reach your goals, there are more goals? I have just spent the last year working on a goal, that's right one (1) goal. The good news is that I've finally achieved it. Wow, a momentous occasion. I can celebrate. I can pat myself on the back and say, "I did it." Well, I can for a couple minutes. As I look out onto the horizon, I see… what are those… more goals. Where did those come from? I didn't see them before. Were they really there? I swear I only had one goal, that's it, only one, and I watched it like a hawk, kept my eye on it every minute. Well, maybe I took my eyes off of it for a moment or two. But what happened in those moments? Did my one goal decide to go out and fool around, giving birth to other goals? The more I look at them, I'm amazed at how much they've grown. They're not small goals anymore. They're huge goals.
Recently, I completed a goal that I had my doubts that I could ever do, graduate massage school, pass the national boards, and get my license. As of today, I am licensed. For a long time, this has been my goal. But in reality, it has only been a part of a bigger goal. My real desire (what I want to do when I grow up) is to do healing full time, whether that be massage, or Reiki, or whatever I'm called to do. That is the real goal. No matter how huge the goal I just achieved is, it was only a small part of the real goal. Other parts of that goal include setting up a business, creating a clientele, and getting an office. And you know something, once I've achieved that goal, I'll bet you know what I'm going to find. That's right, more goals.
I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that life is a set of goals. Every job interview I've ever had has asked me what my goals were, and I could never think very far ahead, if I had any goals at all, past getting the job I was interviewing for. Where do I want to be in five years, or 10, or 20? (I could imagine the looks on their faces if I had said that I wanted to be a holistic healer.) And truthfully, I am still not looking very far ahead. We have to have goals, even if we aren't aware of them, we all have them. Our goals may be as simple as asking Barbara Lou to the dance Saturday. Of course, the real goal may be to find someone that gets along with you, likes the same things, and eventually wants to marry. And the goal of going to the dance is just a small part of that.
We tend to focus on the small (or smaller) goal, rather than the big one for obvious reasons. If we started out with our focus being the big goal, we'd get lost and frustrated real fast. I've seen people do this. I knew one person that had set his goal to be married by a certain age. As that date came closer, so did his stress level. The problem was that he wasn't addressing part A, B, or C. He was addressing part Z. He was ignoring the meeting, the getting to know each other, etc.
We have to break our goals into smaller goals for us to survive them. In fact some of those smaller goals may be so huge that to know it is only a small part of something bigger would just plain old make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes we have to focus so tightly on the goal directly in front of us, and forget that another exists just to get past it. As long as you know somewhere in the back of your mind that there is a bigger purpose.
As long as you know that you are always working toward a goal, you are growing. You are growing, reaching, attaining, maybe having a set back, then reaching again. Even when we have set backs, we grow. But we have to have goals. And we have to know that we will never stop having goals. And we will never stop growing.
I wish you all love, happiness, and continued growth.