This post falls under the “other musings” category and is an opinion/sharing wisdom piece. I am almost 50 years old, I have worked in a professional office setting in various finance roles since the mid 90’s. I’ve seen a lot of theories on professional development, personal growth and overall goal setting to achieve outcomes. The first piece of wisdom I can impart to you is a goal set by other people that you work on are your tasks.
What does that mean? It means that often people in your life have things they want to accomplish but need your help. Work, personal it doesn’t matter really, you participate in the process, let’s say someone is remolding a kitchen. You come over on a Saturday and help haul some trash away. You completed a task to help them achieve their goal.
The trick is to not fall into the trap of being consumed by other people’s goals. This happens a lot in relationships, someone has a vision for their life and you accommodate them as best you can because you love them. If you are lucky, you share the same goal, if not you will be in a “giving” situation in that relationship and that can be draining.
The second piece of wisdom (hang in there, there are only 3 🙂 ) is goals are great for your personal growth and improvement but perfection is the bane of very good or great. What does that mean exactly? Setting a goal for yourself “I will finish my Masters by 28” is great but you have to accommodate life. Rigid goals that have absolutes built in often fail and it’s often the case that we blame ourselves for this and become very hard on ourselves. Anything can happen, what if at 27 someone you love gets sick and you have to take a year off school? Was your goal a failure?
The third piece of wisdom is taking the time to figure out and decide what it is you really want. This is the holy grail of self-awareness isn’t it? Maybe you are a faith based person, maybe you believe in animal rights etc… The goal here is to figure out what makes you happy, and what do you really want to do. This can take decades or it can take minutes but healthy self-reflection is a necessary process to determine where you stand in the desired outcome. We take time to get our coffee’s, go to the gym, update our I-phone operating systems why aren’t we taking MORE time to self-evaluate? Get a journal, from time to time write down the things you are doing and write down how you felt about it. From time to time go back through it, were there multiple entries with you at a beach being happy?
The point here is it’s not about perfection, you’ll never make it but you can achieve very good and that is progression. Progression = getting better and that is figurative and literal. When you achieve goals, even partially you are putting the building blocks together of success and mental contentment. You can do it, and even if you stumble or flat out fail, it’s okay you pick yourself up and keep going.
Remember, it’s not about being perfect, it’s about getting better.
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I agree – perfection is an impossible standard that will drive you insane. Simply trying to be better is enough. In fact, better is the best. Great advice Karac. 🙏
Indeed, often our harshest critic is ourselves. Perfection is the bane of very good. Thank you for coming by and sharing your thoughts.