How Setting Goals Backfired Pt.2
How Setting Goals Backfired Pt.2
incl. practical steps of what to do instead
I remember when my 10 year plan first ended at 26. At 26, I had been married for 2.5 years and was miserable. This was not what I anticipated marriage would be like when I was 16. Everyone told me the first year would be hard so I got through the first year. But the second year was harder than the first. I could feel myself becoming an empty shell. I was losing myself.
I felt the abyss staring at me, threatening to swallow me whole.
I had just graduated my Master’s program and felt so existentially disappointed. This accolade I had been setting my sights on for an entire decade was just over. Everything I had worked towards, the orientation of my entire life was finished. What was I going to do now?
I felt like I was becoming the abyss.
The narratives I encountered in expressing this dissatisfaction with my life was that THIS was what life was, a spoken / unspoken “get used to it”: resign yourself to the fate of dissatisfaction with life and get on with it.
Oh, but I didn’t want to. And I am nothing if not stubborn.
The end of my 10 year plan felt excruciatingly exposed and simultaneously freeing. It began a chain of events that led to a point-of-no-return. Without having a milestone to chase next, I was left only with myself. And I didn’t like how I felt, with myself or in my life.
And so began a fundamental shift in how I looked forward. Rather than projecting GOALS into the future, I started with how I wanted to feel. Scrawled on the outer edges of a journal page were the words “NOT LIKE THIS”. I knew I didn’t like how I felt and I knew I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
I started with a list 50 things I wanted to FEEL. Not things I wanted to do or achievements I wanted to check off - I listed how I wanted to feel. But I am a Capricorn so the list didn’t stop there - each of the 50 feelings had a corresponding memory of when I’ve felt that way, with room for me to capture what I was doing.
It looked something like this:
Do you know how you want to feel in your life? I’d love to hear from you!
Before I made any decisions about whether to stay or leave my marriage, I started to integrate what made me feel the way I wanted to feel. I didn’t want to make such a big life choice from the abyss.
I started doing the things that were the portkey to the feelings I wanted. I stopped doing the things that were solely conducted by obligation and expectation.
I started with yoga in the kitchen because the boundaries of the mat helped contain the freedom I had grown unaccustomed. I started reading for pleasure again. I joined an intuitive art class to feel creative and connected. I stopped shaving my legs to feel less obligated. I started wearing colourful clothes and not the monochrome palette I had been rotating in the duration of my marriage. My clothes are the best mood ring I’ve had.
When I started to FEEL the way I knew my 16-year old self had envisioned I would feel at 26, THEN I could see clearly the next milestones down the path. I first had to connect to myself, before I could connect to the path because I am the path.