Don't Let That Voice Inside Your Head Talk You Out Of Your Dreams
What I Learned By Setting A Lofty Goal And Then Failing Almost Immediately
What I Learned By Setting A Lofty Goal And Then Failing Almost Immediately
I failed.
It wasn’t going to come together in time. All of the negative chatter in my mind started beating on me. I missed.
I set a personal goal for myself this summer to try and publish every day in July and August. After two weeks of trying to make good on this, I was starting to struggle.
On some days the writing just flowed, making it easy to hit publish and achieve the goal. On other days though, I felt like I was trying to push water uphill.
I’d spend all day and night, on and off of the computer writing, only to feel like nothing I had written was cohesive enough to publish.
I felt like crap on these days. All that work and “nothing” to show for it.
I was putting all kinds of pressure on myself to publish every single day. I started to wonder if it was worth it. I was only two weeks in and I didn’t want to flake, especially not that early. But then I started to reconsider why I had set that goal in the first place. I mean, who said I had to publish every day anyway?
The whole premise of the goal was consistency.
I thought it would be easier to be consistent if I published every day, rather than on some broader schedule. In my mind it would be simple to track because, if I didn’t publish yet, then I simply wasn’t done. There was no wishy-washy, ‘Well, I guess I can write tomorrow instead, I mean, I have all week.’
It was binary.
Done or Not Done.
The unfortunate result of this plan was that I forced myself to be in front of the computer for way longer than I wanted to be. Possibly for unhealthy amounts of time, sitting in my uncomfortable chair typing away, trying to brute force my way to something worth publishing. Trying to punch through the wall.
These were the days that I felt like I was failing. I just couldn’t snap out of my frustrated haze.
I would glance at the clock and do the math to see how many more hours I had before I had to hit the publish button. I was starting to drive myself crazy. It wasn’t working. At least not for me, not the way I was doing it.
Since then I’ve adjusted my goal and it’s helped. Instead of trying to publish every single day, now I try to publish every other day, at a minimum. With this adjustment, I can take one day off, but not two in a row. Still easy to track. Still tough.
Even after this adjustment, I recently had one of those days anyway.
I had written for hours and hours over this particular two day period. I had created two articles, one each day, but I didn’t like either of them. If I didn’t want to fail my newly adjusted goal, I had to create something before midnight, and I was running out of time.
I finally got to the point around 11:30 PM where I was thinking I’ve had enough. The article needed too much and I didn’t see a way through.
I had to call it. This meant that I wouldn’t hit my goal. Not only that, this meant that I wouldn’t hit my newly softened goal either, making me question my ability even further.
I was failing and I felt like shit.
Once I knew I was cooked, I decided to unwind by watching some YouTube to try and tune out and give it another shot the next day. I figured that if I put the computer down and read the article again in the morning, I could look at it with a fresh set of eyes.
I ended up watching two different podcasts randomly that night. Not full episodes, but just enough to hear the same validating point twice. It was like the universe was telling me to keep going, I was close.
Both of the podcast guests were talking about a similar idea to the one I had written about all day. It was the concept that only you can really know what’s best for you and that you should trust your gut.
This was basically what I was trying to write about that whole freaking day. Hearing these two different podcasts with established well known guests say the essentially the same thing was all I needed in order to know that my message was worth sharing.
I woke up the next morning and cleaned up what I had written. I found a central idea to wrap it all around and I was finally able to hit that sweet publish button.
It felt great!
When we try to do something that is important to us and it doesn’t work out, it can lead to a deep sense of frustration and sometimes feelings of hopelessness.
Trying and failing, despite your best effort, hurts.
It plain old sucks.
For me, it invites the not-so-nice voice back into my head.
The voice filled with doubt. The one that wonders if I’m fooling myself. The one that thinks I’m not good enough.
There are going to be days where you try and try and it doesn’t work out. It’s hard to remember in the moment, but it’s important to remind yourself that this work has not been in vain. In other words, the effort wasn’t for nothing.
You sharpened the sword. You put in the rep. You got closer.
You freaking showed up and that’s awesome. Remember this.
I write this for you as much as I do for me. I need to remind myself of this more often.
If what you’re working on is important to you then you are bound to have bad days. Why? It’s just statistics. If you’re putting yourself out there enough, there’s going to be some mathematically significant proportion of the days where things just won’t go well.
Take pride and feel joy in your effort.
Show up!
It’s important that we set goals for ourselves and it can be unbelievably frustrating when we don’t reach them. I want to remind you that as long as you are showing up and giving your best each day, you will get better. You will get closer.
Don’t quit.
Everyone is different and we all need to decide how we handle failure. Whether it’s failing to reach the large goals in our lives, or perhaps failing to hit the daily-grind goals that we feel will bring us closer to our dreams. We have to keep trying. We have to find a way. We have to persist.
Some days are going to suck. Some days you will feel like you’ve failed. Show up tomorrow anyway. Try to salvage your attempts. If they cannot be fixed, they are still notches on the belt of experience. Move on and keep going!
As long as you stay in it, you still have a chance.
I was so excited to have salvaged this article after I thought I was going to have to scrap it. If I hadn’t shown up to do the work, I wouldn’t have had anything ready that next morning. If I didn’t show up the next morning, I wouldn’t have had that great feeling of victory when I finally finished it.
So what did I learn?
- If you believe in what you are doing, keep going. Show up for the work. Show up for yourself. Show up for the people that you may be serving with your project, whatever it may be.
- You may have to adjust your goals to be a little more in line with where you’re at right now, but it’s still important to set them. Make them achievable. Don’t make it something so hard that you have no real chance to achieve it. I probably overshot a little with my initial goal, but I had the sense to sniff out what was essential about it and set a new goal that would allow for similar results, but one that is more in line with my current ability.
- Remember that you are trying. You’re showing up. That alone is a win and it feels even better if things do actually work out. Keep trying. You will get better. In the meantime, remember to be kind to yourself. You’re doing the best you can.
What are you working on right now that you believe in?
Is there an idea that you have been considering starting?
What needs to be done next?
What small step can you take right now to get closer?
Write the answers to these questions down and put them somewhere that you can see them.
Then, get after it.
Good luck to all of you out there!
Here’s that story that I was having a hard time bringing together. It’s the one I was talking about in this article.
MrJsn