This year, I have set huge aggressive Q1 goals for myself that really requires me to push through a lot of my limits to create the results I want. These goals are so challenging that if I can achieve even 50% on all of the goals, I would be achieving massive growth in all areas of my life.
The quote “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” by Norman Vincent Peale is a perfect way to describe the mentality behind these goals.
However, now being one month in, I am feeling stumped that I am so far “behind” on my goals. I am feeling stressed out and defeated for not getting 33% of my goals completed by now. I realize that instead of viewing these as big meaningful challenges, I have already turned them into expectations of what I NEED to achieve. I am already looking at these now as to-dos and anything less than 100% is failure. In turn, I experienced a lot of stress and internal struggle which becomes negative energy that is counter-productive towards getting the goals done.
I know that this needs to change as soon as possible so that it doesn’t get further in my way of achieving my goals. And luckily, I was able to find inspirations from my history as a gamer to break out of this mindset.
In video games, we accept failures and defeats as common because we know that games are designed to be challenging. We are expected to fail at least a few times throughout the game. And when we do, we simply hit “continue” and move on to the next attempt. We learn to fail without feeling like a failure. We continue to practice, gain experience, and grow; all the while, we are having fun failing.
I asked myself. Why aren’t I applying the same mentality to my life? When did I make it not okay to fail in anything in life? Why did I choose not to have fun? By applying this mentality, I know it will do tremendous good for me in my work towards my goals.
So I am choosing to fully recognize how difficult my goals are and that it is possible, and likely, that I will fall short of the goals because of how challenging they are. It is okay to fail, so I don’t need to be afraid of failing.
So now that I get that fear out of the way, I am going to have some FUN challenging myself to get 100%!! I will have fun “failing”. I know that if I keep working my hardest towards these goals, I am going to create MASSIVE results. Be it 50%, 100%, or 120%, there will be tons to celebrate in the end regardless!
“I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.” – Oprah Winfrey
Thanks Sam for sharing. Treating goals like games is an interesting correlation and profound. May we have fun all of Q1!
Awesome share Sam! You’re setting yourself up for win with your Q1 goals :). You got this man!! So proud of you.