Achieve Your Goals (Without Burning Out)

You may have heard it said “Do not despise the day of small beginnings”, and this has been something of a mantra for me of late. 

You may be feeling behind in life right now. You may feel anxious, or overwhelmed. Like you have all these goals that you can never seem to accomplish. Perhaps you wonder what your life’s purpose is - and if you’ll ever fulfil it. 

In these moments, it’s tempting to see the gap between where you are and where you want to be as far too great a chasm to cross. So you choose not to choose. To numb out of the discomfort with social media, TV, busyness, or any other number of things.

I know exactly how that feels.

Let me tell you a secret - the reason you’re not fulfilling yout goals is probably not because you’re lazy or lacking in motivation. 

The real problem may be that you lack the confidence to just take that first, faltering step. 

You may hope to get it right first time and when you don’t, you feel like there’s something wrong with you.

But consider a baby. 

When a baby takes its first step, the parents don’t berate it for how wobbly and inexperienced it is, because they know that with practice, their child will soon be running. If they shouted at their child for not walking well, then you wouldn’t blame the baby for never trying again.

Yet, we do this very thing to ourselves -

trying something for the first time then beating ourselves up because we’re not very good at it yet…

and then wondering why it’s so hard to continue. 

It’s uncomfortable to fall and fail, but fail we must if we want to have any hope of succeeding in the end. 

So how do you get over the fear of failure?

I encourage you to approach yourself with compassion instead. 

When I trained for my first marathon, I rarely thought about what it would really be like to run 26 miles. Each week, I would run just one mile further than the week before. 

I was slow. 

And it certainly didn’t resemble anything like the glamorous adverts I’d seen. Sometimes it was all I could do to take one more step, let alone a mile. 

But every week, week after week, I cultivated consistency in training. Instead of focusing on how I felt or how well I ran in the moment, I focused on how I knew I would feel and how I would run in the future. And I tried to maintain an attitude of gratitude throughout the whole process. 

One day, that small beginning became the victory of crossing the finishing line and achieving one of my greatest life goals. 

What are your goals?

I challenge you to go and grab a journal and pen right now - and to write down whatever big task or project or goal you’ve been struggling to achieve. Then, write down the first step.

And take it. 

Embrace being bad at it. Congratulate yourself on simply taking the first step. 

And, whatever you do, never despise the day of small beginnings.