Remind Yourself Why You're Pursuing a Goal

As we plod through life, first looking for how to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, we often take the path directly in front of us, to insure our best supposed guess that this pathway is indeed the best choice. We see some appearance or feeling of assurance that this will best provide for our family's welfare, but what guarantees will that choice assure? There's really no more insurance in that choice than following a different path and perhaps one that more closely involves your better talents and feeds your inner self gratification. Wouldn't it make sense that doing something you love and is what you do best, will provide the best chance of success? Yet we so often choose to begin a career that we just happen to walk into.

There are some who seem to know what they want to do in life, but that is not the most common case. Most of us have ideas or talents that we discover in our early youth, but also experience some other factors that influence or change our direction, away from what we truly love to do for a career. If those in these cases, do not have a mentor or someone who sees this true ability to keep on the correct path, we very likely reach an age when we must begin to accept more responsibility and therefore, when we look at the paths ahead, we begin careers that seem to offer more security of providing for our responsibilities.

When we have the chance to do something we love in life, we will often have second thoughts and fears about failure. What if...and what happens when... We need to accept that we will have these moments and that is normal. What we need to remember is what are our alternatives. What will happen if we fail? What else would we be doing?

I often use this method when I have a goal that seems almost unimaginable or unreachable, but we see others succeed, so we wonder why couldn't we? What is so different about people who succeed? It is that they remember why they are following that path and what would be the alternative. They pass the doubtful moment aside and refocus on the goal. When you do this and find you succeed, you will realize that you made it and you will never forget it!

For example, when my youngest daughter was in grade school, her mother, from whom I was divorced, and I, began to discuss what high school she would go to as the area that would have been the natural progression was in a community that left much to be desired, as far as providing a good education. I had been remarried and we had built a new house in a different community that also did not provide an excellent choice for a high school education, but I didn't think that would be necessary. I did not think that I would in any way, be able to move to a better school district at that time, but my wife and I began looking. To make a long story short, the first day of high school, I was waiting, with my daughter, on the stairs of our new home, for the school bus, which stopped directly in front of our house. In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined that my daughter would be living with me, let alone have another new house and have the school bus stop directly in front of the house, so she wouldn't have to walk down the block or stand in bad weather. This story often resurfaces in my mind whenever I have a goal that seems unreachable. You CAN achieve goals that seem impossible! The people who become very successful know this and continue to find ways around obstacles when they arise, rather than give up and take a safer path.

Passion and drive have as much, if not more value than anything else you need to reach your goals. It is true that you can achieve impossible things by not giving up. This is what Olympic athletes do. They don't give up. They find a way....they keep remembering why they want to do this....