There is this pervasive sentiment throughout the “self-help” universe that too many people are afraid to chase their dreams and instead float through their lives without grabbing what they want. One flaw, and perhaps not even the biggest one, with this train of thought is that it doesn’t take into account the difficulty in choosing.
In order to chase your dreams, you must first know what those dreams are. And whether it happened when you were a child or a young adult or has yet to take place, that means making a choice. Choosing is hard, but there are few tools you can consistently use to define small dreams, big dreams, and everything in-between.
Over the years, including recently, I’ve read quite a bit about the concept of ‘flow.’ If you are unfamiliar, the term represents a mental state in which a person is engaged in an activity where they are fully immersed with a feeling of energized focus, involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Though I don’t think I have ever found flow myself, there is one element that I frequently utilize: the challenge/skills ratio.
I have (often) chosen goals that are well above my skill level and subsequently failed at them. I have (rarely) chosen ones that are insufficiently challenging, and they are subsequently unfulfilling. The best goals I have chosen are ones that fall in the sweet spot of challenging AND realistically attainable. This, of course, isn’t a world-altering idea, but always keeping those two characteristics in mind simplifies the process.
It scales up or down to whatever size goals you may be chasing, and I have always found it crucial to have multiple levels simultaneously. My goal for today was to go for a long bike ride despite my quads still burning from a huge day Sunday. For the week, it’s 35 miles of running and 50 biking. For the year, it’s 1,500 miles of each.
But these goals aren’t always numerical, far from it. I spend more time than you can imaging researching challenges and scoping routes that inspire me. I don’t share most of them until the time is right to commit, but there are things I want to do in the next month, next year, and next decade. All of them are hopefully aligned properly in the challenge/skills Venn diagram.
When it comes to specific objectives, I also have found it helpful to express multiple tiers of goals - typically three - leading up to the day. The primary goal is what I want to accomplish if everything comes together perfectly. But since that is so rare, to avoid constant repetitive disappointment, I place a secondary goal, which is still difficult but would be nearly as satisfying. My tertiary goal is then the least impressive performance that I would still be happy with.
For instance, I believe my goals for my first 50k race were:
(Primary) Finish in 6.5 hours. This would have been an impressive time for my fitness level at the time.
(Secondary) Finish in 8 hours. This was realistic but not super easy.
(Tertiary) Push through all the pain and complete the course whether it was within the time limit or not. Certain circumstances made my prep for that race lacking, so I just wanted to finish the distance.
My primary goal did not come to fruition, but I did meet my secondary. And since I had established beforehand that this goal would satisfy me, it did. Good and bad, there is a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy in this world.
Of course, on top of all of that, the most important factor is that your goals and dreams must be things that you WANT to accomplish - things that you find enjoyable. Proper motivation is always unlikely to be found unless you’re having fun. But these concepts should apply regardless what your thing is.
Now that you have your goals, choose to chase them.