This morning I was reading Arnold Bennett’s book Mental Efficiency. Kind of a slog to read through, but some gems in there.
Like this:

…no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than that dealt by failure.

True. Solomon put it slightly differently:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. [Prov. 13:12]

On one hand, failure isn’t a thing to fear or to be avoided. If we see failure for what it is, simply a step on the road to our goals, it becomes less intimidating, less cruel. But when we fail over and over in reaching our goals or resolving our problems or simply moving on, it wears us down. Before long, we begin to see only the pattern of failure in our lives, and it makes us want to quit trying.

Bennett names three common causes of failure:

• unrealistic expectations: “you undertook too much at the beginning.”
• peer pressure: “the disintegrating effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends.”
• impracticality: “you did not rearrange your day.”

unrealistic expectations

I do this all the time.

It’s a problem with me forgetting that I am, after all, not SuperWoman. Which is fine, if I realize this and set realistic goals, i.e., goals that a normal person can actuallyar achieve in a given amount of time.

Goals like write a novel this year, not write a novel today. See the difference?

Do you overestimate yourself? It’s good to set our expectations high. Most of us can do far more than we think we can. But we also need to be realistic about the demands of the day (which won’t simply disappear because we have a lofty new goal to pursue) and what we can accomplish with those demands still intact. We can also work on reducing the demands so we can focus on what is most important to us.

peer pressure

Mediocrity, interesting part of our culture. It’s like a big, lame party; nobody’s really having fun, but everybody’s acting like they’re happy because everybody else seems to be having a good time…
If one honest person would just step up and say, this party is lame, I have better things to do, there would be a lot of agreement. But since nobody says that, everybody just keeps smiling and making stupid comments and eating the cold appetizers.

You’ll get a mixed bag response if you set a high goal or demand more from yourself than the inane level of mediocrity in which most of us settle. Some people will encourage you, push you on, be inspired and become an inspiration to you.
Others will, because of their own unmet expectations and failed goals, make light of your resolutions, predict failure, and generally hold you up for mockery, either implied or explicit.

Simple Solution: just do your thing, set your goal, and start achieving it without talking about it. While accountability can be a powerful help on the road to reaching your goals, you need to be accountable to the right sort of people, not the public in general (in most cases). If your group of friends tends toward the snarky side, don’t expect them to suddenly veer into warm, empathetic encouragement to help you on your way.

impracticality

Maybe you can set realistic goals:

• run a 5k next month
• read a book a week
• write a blog post every day
• eat more salads

Whatever they are, if you don’t actually plan in the time and stuff you’ll need to do the work to reach those goals, you won’t reach them.

To train for a 5k, you need to start running on a regular basis. When will you do that? Do you own running shoes?
To read a book a week, you need a book. And you need to pick the book up instead of turning the tv on, or sitting in front of the computer, or going to the mall.
To write a blog post every day, you need to set aside the length of time it takes you do produce a post. Otherwise it will be shoved aside, shoved aside, and eventually forgotten.
To eat more salads, well, you need some lettuce in the refrigerator, right? And you need to make it part of your meal plan. Don’t go eat at fast food joints 5x/week if your goal is to eat more salads.

Do you set good goals but then fail to give yourself the resources to achieve them?

Don’t set yourself up for failure.

As you review your goals, make some changes and adjustments to the ones that are causing you grief. Go through the checklist:

• Are my goals actually achievable in my life?

• Are my peers encouraging me or discouraging me in these goals? [you can always get new friends. maybe you should...]

• Am I planning in the time and getting myself the resources I need to make regular progress toward my goals?

Image: Through a window by Muffet

Let’s jump right in here. What’s the toughest part about reaching your goals?
Not defining them, usually.
Not figuring out how to reach them.
The path to even the most difficult goals is usually obvious. Action 1, action 2, action 3, acgtion 4, and so on. If you want to write a book and get a great book deal, that’s difficult to do but not difficult to understand how to do.

The difficulty is in the doing, the action, the day-to-day continued commitment.

Why? What happens? It isn’t usually because the work is so hard. It’s because we lose the vision, and then we don’t remember why… and we’re basically lazy… and old habits are strong. So we give up.

Answer? Put something in place to take the place of that rush of vision.

1. Accountability

Accountability means saying in some public way or another, “Hey, I’m doing this! Everybody watch and see!”

It’s almost a dare. It’s exposure. It’s bold. It’s unnerving. And it makes you want to do whatever you said you’d do, because now you’ve got an audience and they’re going to know your failure if you give up.

“Everybody” doesn’t have to be a big group. It could be your spouse, a couple of friends, a small group of folks with the same interest. It could be your blog readership, which might be very small or very large depending. It could be your entire social network.

The size of the group doesn’t matter; what matters is that in some public way you make a commitment. You share the vision and you share the plan, and you say, “Dare you to watch me accomplish this.”

And then you don’t want to quit, because you’ve got a person, or people, or a group, watching you. You don’t want to disappoint them. You don’t want to be embarrassed. And that motivation, of pleasing and impressing people, can be enough to keep you going even when the vision is really vague.

2. Tracking

Tracking means specific actions and deadlines and then keeping track of how well you do at achieving those actions by those deadlines.

Tracking also means collecting information related to your actions or ultimate goals. Keeping a food journal, for example, and recording your daily weight is a way to track your progress on a diet or fitness program.

Tracking can be as simple as writing stuff down on a piece of paper or the calendar and scratching it off once you’ve achieved it.
Of course, there are lots of other more tech-savvy ways to track your progress, too.

• You can get goal-tracking software or use an online goal-tracking system, such as Joe’s Goals.
• Join a goal-tracking group, which could be “real-world” ( Weight Watchers, for example), or based online ( 43Things).
• Put a goal-tracking app on your smart phone: I use Trak for iPhone. It’s free.
• Or get any other type of system you want in place (calendar, notebook, etc.).

The point is, you track your day-to-day progress and you grab the information that helps you become more aware of your pgoress, your habits, and then obstacles you need to overcome to reach your goals.

And that information can be powerful motivation, a new awareness that keeps you going even when you can’t remember quite why you’re pursuing this goal.

Work It Together

For any challenging goal, the smartest move (if you want to succeed, that is) is to use both tracking and accountability. Tracking can be as detailed as you like, as simple or complicated as you need. Just keep up with it. Look at how far you’ve come. Get the information. get a system in place for it.

Add the tracking to some kind of accountability. Start a blog, join a group, join a forum, take on a challenge with a friend.

Achieving your goals is difficult because it requires you to stretch out of your comfortable boundaries and create new spaces, new habits. You have to stretch, you have to lose old habits, and you have to gain proficiency at unfamiliar and difficult tasks. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Don’t be a loner. Share your vision and it becomes stronger.

If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one’s existence, if on does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. A person who achieves contentment by withdrawing from the world to “cultivate his own garden,” like Voltaire’s Candide, cannot be said to lead an excellent life. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

Image: success by charliedayartist

So you have to choose:

what constitutes success in your life right now?

Don’t limit yourself because of fear, but do limit your goals (the ones you are actively pursuing) to as many as you can focus on. I’ve found that I max out at about 3 big goal chases at a time.

What’s wrong with traditional goal-setting

I’ve seen lots of recommendations; the most common among women’s advice circles seems to be to go through the basic areas of your life and set goals for each one. Depending on what you define as a single area, you can have from 5 to 10 areas, and thus, 5 to 10 goals, happening at a time.
For example, a typical area-of-life breakdown might look like this:

1. - marriage/relationships
2. - kids/parenting
3. - home
4. - work/career
5. - health/fitness
6. - personal
7. - social
8. - educational/intellectual
9. - hobbies…

If you take the traditional route of setting one goal for each area, then actively pursuing each goal, you’ll be simultaneously trying to fix your life in 5, 10, 12 areas at a time.
That’s a lot of pressure.

a better goal-setting method

I suggest a different, simpler, and infinitely more effective route; this works for anyone, but it’s especially helpful for Moms who are juggling their own needs along with those of husband, kids, house, job, social life, etc. When your life is complicated, your goal-setting should be simple.
Basically, you need to ask yourself three questions:

Question 1. What in my (current) life bothers me most?

Not just that nagging tooth ache you need to make an appointment for, though certainly you should go see your dentist about that… But what is happening, or not happening, in your life that bothers you on a daily and deeply?
Goal #1: Fixing/eliminating the problem you identify in Question #1.

Question 2. What do I dream of pursuing someday?

For Moms, maybe you’ve put your career on hold until your kids are in school; or maybe you dream of what life will be like when you’re financially able to quit your job and stay home; or maybe you have a career and kids and you’re loving both but you’ve put off some other dreams, like traveling or learning a new language or learning to cook or getting in shape or volunteering. What are you putting off, waiting on, putting on hold while your life continues around you?
Goal #2: Taking action to reach that dream you identify in Question #2.

Question 3. What can I do to simplify and de-stress my life in a practical/logistical way?

You want to keep your life above the survival level, but you can’t fix everything all at once. That’s where most of us mess up; we get inspired, motivated, frustrated enough to declare war on the way things are. We’re going to fix the kids, fix the husband, fix the finances, fix ourselves, fix the house, all by February 15, so help me God.

And that just doesn’t happen… so we give up, right? The point is, it’s simply too much to try to fix it all. The point of Question #3 is to help you figure out one goal you can reach to simplify your life, thus reducing stress (and improving the quality) of all your life. Maybe it’s declutter the closets, finish the kitchen remodel, join a gym, get a new wardrobe, or get a regular babysitter. Maybe it’s quit your job, get out of debt, or simplify your social life. You decide; what rings truest with you right now? You can tackle the other stuff later.
Goal #3: Simplifying/reducing stress in your life by tackling one practical/logistical area you identify in Question #3.

Printable Goal-Setting Worksheet

I’ve put together a down loadable, printable worksheet so you can sit down with these three questions and your purple Sharpie (oh, is that just me?) and set some goals that you’ll actually reach. Download it by clicking here.

Image: No. 3 (Washington, DC) by takomabibelot

The Audacity of Passion

There is so much audacity in putting words on paper and assuming any of them are worthwhile. And it’s no good saying, “Well if only one person is helped by what I write then it is worth it…” That’s a lovely, noble albeit impractical thought and to it I say it better be some person to keep me waking up at 4 a.m. to scribble things down and that person must need a lot of help.

I hope it is crowds of people and thousands of copies and yes, large sums of money. Because money is a sign of value, and if I am to find a decent value in the time I’ve put in it will take a lot of money.

But that might not happen.

And I’ll write anyway, though heartsick at times for a word of praise, a paid job, a recognition, acceptance, affirmation.

That’s not why I write, though, because if it were I’d have stopped long ago and just focused on something like gardening or having babies, both of which seem to be far more productive. I might have a genuine knack for the baby thing…

Balance Is a Myth

Life is always happening. I have to choose my part in it.
Balance is a myth, I think, one we should reject summarily. Great and genius people, those who change what is, are never great examples of balance. They are, most often, the worst at it, because greatness, genius, and passion require more dedication than a “balanced life” can give. Balance is for the consumer, not the creator.

Give Up False Desires

We need to determine what gives us the most pleasure at a level beyond the distracted, flesh-driven, easy answer. We all have superfluous interests, things that are not bad but that don’t reach the very core of who we are. They deceive us, like thinking we’re hungry for food when really we need a long drink of good water.

They are temporary desires, circumstantial, arbitrary, and the result is a befuddled mind and satiation without satisfaction. I don’t think any of us were meant to be consumers only, as the definition of our life. How many hobbies, interests, so-called passions are based on consuming rather than on creating, giving, being, producing?

We need to find the true passions and then guiltlessly, freely, unhesitatingly get rid of the extraneous. Downsize, downplay, eliminate or simplify everything else. Why not focus on what matters most? Isn’t it really absurd to do anything else?

Sacrificing for Your Passion

I have stumbled across a few truths and one of them is that there is no such thing as a perfect life, a perfectly balanced life, or really even a simple life. Certain sacrifices must be made in order to pursue anything you’re passionate about.

Writing I am passionate about, but that’s not all. I’m also passionate about truth and about books, both of which mix very handily with my writing habit. I’m also passionate about my husband and children and the love I want to give them. That – family, its demands and rewards – does not mix handily with writing. But what of it? Neither passion is negated or even lessened in the slightest by the other.

Sure, there is plenty of side-sorting to do through the age-old things like guilt and resentment and lack of time. But none of those things are new or unique to my situation.

Avoiding Guilt and Resentment

We are a people who are capable of seeing our own imperfections, and we’ll always find something to feel guilty or resentful about just to avoid the real causes:

• We feel guilty for not living up to the perfection we know (instinctively) and crave, and simultaneously
• We feel resentful of carrying this instinct, this knowledge and burden of the perfect while being unable to reach it.

We would do ourselves a favor, release ourselves to be something worthwhile, if we would release this urge for balance and perfection and turn our energy instead toward our passions. Perfectionism just results in creative frustration. The pursuit of balance – mythical, unattainable, magical, immeasurable balance – results in creative paralysis.

Our lives will find their own natural rhythm if we quit worrying about an artificial balance and start living in time with our heartbeat.

Images
1. “The Light” courtesy of Jody McNary Photography on Flickr.

There Is No Perfect

…at least not here on earth. In the meantime, here on earth, imperfect earth, there are only two options (neither is perfection): reality and fantasy. The things you actually do enter reality and you benefit from them, even if they’re mediocre or imperfect. Some benefit is better than none. Small steps are better than standing still. But when you ignore, delay, procrastinate… nothing is real. Nothing becomes real.

The Myth of Failure

All the possibilities stay in the realm of fantasy, and you’re stuck there, a prisoner to all the things that might happen. The fantasy of failure and the fantasy of success are equally unproductive and equally unlikely as long as you sit.
But if you take small steps, tiny steps, make daily efforts toward success? Even when you mess up, you’re still bringing some measure of success into reality. And that’s when you start seeing failure as it is: a myth.
The only real failure is the failure to move, to try, to risk, to work.

Quit Setting Ho-Hum Goals

If your goals were such that you knew you could reach immediate and perfect success in them, they wouldn’t be very inspiring, would they?
Big goals inspire us to take on big challenges, face big fears, do more, be more than we knew we could. But you don’t get that sitting still. Sit still on anything and you’ll stay the same, while things around you slowly, surely deteriorate.
Something you’ll accomplish immediately and perfectly isn’t worthy of being called a goal. It’s an item on our to-do list. Do it and then find something bigger, scarier, riskier, more exciting, more rewarding for a real goal. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” said Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

You Have No Idea What You’re Capable Of

The truth is, you have no idea what you’re capable of and almost every one of us estimates far, far too low. We were made in the image of God! The dreams and goals we have – both the ones we cherish and the ones forced upon us by circumstances – are God’s way of waking us up to our own potential. It’s like His hand is on your shoulder, shaking you awake, saying, “Come on, this will be fun! You can do this! I wouldn’t ask you to if you couldn’t.”
And you can either jump up and follow Him and try and see yourself succeed, or you can clench your eyes shut, hide under the covers, and rot.

Your call.

“Oh, hmm, well, I guess I’ll take the rotting option. Yeah. That sounds peachy.”
Okay… have fun with that, really. Me? I’m getting out of bed. I’m awake, I’m interested, I’m ready. My motto: “Find something I can’t do. I DARE you.”

You Can’t… Unless You Want To

Are there things I can’t do? Sure! Lots of them. And I’ll find them, but for every one thing I find that I can’t, I’ll find a hundred that I can.
I’ve gotten a lot of “You can’t” messages in life. We all do, because the world is looking for the lowest common denominator. It’s a way of making every lazy, fearful person feel better about sticking their heads under a pillow instead of living. We measure ourselves by each other (even though that’s a silly thing to do).
You can listen to the messages of a society which has obviously and repeatedly proved its own lack of intelligence. If that’s where you go for your guide to life… well, you’ll have a socially acceptable, ho-hum-boring life. You won’t be a mover and a shaker, a trend-setter, a record-breaker. You won’t inspire or enlighten or challenge. You’ll be just another individual in the mass of individuals who want nothing more than to hide their individuality. Enjoy.
You might want to invest in a better mattress because you’ll be spending a lot of time in it.

Or.

Or. That’s the best two-letter word in the English language, don’t you think?
Or.
Or you can take all the “you-can’t” lines you’ve been given and throw them out the window.
“You can’t have a happy marriage.” (But I do!)
“You can’t have a baby at home.” (But I did, three of them, in fact.)
“You can’t survive on one income.” (But we are!)
“You can’t make it without health insurance.” (But here we are, healthy.)
“You can’t find time to write while you’re a Mom.”
“You can’t get out of debt.”
“You can’t be happy.”
“You can’t be faithful to your spouse.”
“You can’t find good friends.”
“You can’t accomplish big things without money.”
“You can’t own a business.”
“You can’t finish school.”
“You can’t make a decision.”
“You can’t succeed.”
“You can’t write a book.”
“You can’t change.”
“You can’t make money at the work you love.”
“You can’t, you can’t, you can’t…”.
What are the “you-can’ts” in your world? I have one final sentence for you, the only “you-can’t” worth using:
“You can’t tell me what to do.”

They’re Just Little Obstacles

Most of the reasons that “you can’t” do not actually touch the reason why you should. They’re not really reasons for failure. They’re just excuses for other people who are scared. They’re just little obstacles to your inevitable success. Step over them. Step around them. Build a bridge. Keep moving!

Refuse to be the lowest common denominator. Refuse to be anything but the full breadth of your potential.
-
Image courtesy of notsogoodphotography.

Commit to your own success.

Shoot for the highest possible goal.

Take yourself seriously.

Get rid of the physical irritations: do it.
Face the fear of success: overcome it.

Let go of things that don’t belong to you.

Be enthusiastic! Overzealous! Passionate! Annoying! Go for it!
You’re not just like everybody else.

You’re not a cynic; you’re a dreamer.

Dream without reservation.
Write without hearing the critic’s voice.
Act without questioning your ability.
Be true and real and honest.
If it isn’t working, kill it.

Start over. Commit.

Dream. Speak your dreams.
Believe. Reach. Don’t stop.
Failure is not inevitable. Obstacles are part of the process.

With diligence, success IS inevitable.

Image courtesy of Shoes on Wire.

The world is full of too many possibilities. We can never grasp them all. We are inadequate for everything but able still to conquer more than we think. We must let go of paralysis, fear, anxiety, self-consciousness.

We get distracted. We blind ourselves staring into the sun, but the sun isn’t our aim. The world is full of obstacles and we spend too much time avoiding them. Challenges make us alive. Comfort, too much of it, deadens our senses. We need the zest, the thrill, the hurt of sweat dripping off our noses and muscles tight from exertion. We need the pain of a hard chair and tiredness of a night staying up too late writing another page, and then another, and then another, and then another.

We need hard work, because we shun hard work as a culture. Our goals are to ease the pain of work, and in so focusing on the part that is painful we lose sight of the sheer pleasure of exertion toward an admirable goal.

Work is brilliant. Work is beautiful. Work is our life. Healthy, rightful play is work. We have, most of us, even forgotten how to play well. Instead we seek to be amused, which is not active involvement but passive reception.

We listen to music rather than make it. We pretend our exploits via video games rather than attempt them. We watch others live and laugh and hurt and love and conquer and die on the movie screen rather than walk outside and take the risk ourselves. We detach ourselves from life by engaging ourselves in non-life, in imitations of life: ear phones, cell phones, computer screens, chat rooms, social pages, news feeds, blog posts, newspapers, radio, streaming music, youtube videos, texting, messaging, uploading, downloading, saving, reformatting, watching not a bird or a real person but an actor, listening not to the wind or the waves or the sound of a voice next to us, something real, but to a recording of something real.

None of these things are bad, but it is bad that they have become all that we are. We define ourselves on-line rather than in life. We spend more time thinking of a cute status update or a great tag line on our blog than we do thinking of a sister’s birthday gift or a conversation with a friend. We are so busy recording life into pixelated pieces that we are neglecting to live it.

The trouble isn’t technology, it is human laziness and apathy and the ease with which we roll into the rut beside us. This problem was around long before the computers lit up, and it will continue to be around long after the next fifteen thousand technologies come and go. We can lose ourselves in anything that amuses, entertains, swallows us up without providing any value.

We call it leisure but it is not; it does not refresh or rejuvenate us, it drains us of energy and leaves us blinking and yawning. It is the feeling of stepping out of the movie theater into the bright afternoon sun, surprised to find that a whole world has been happening while we were lost in another. One is real, one is not. There is nothing wrong with make-believe. We need pretend, fantasy, and ways to escape. But we need a life to escape from, not just a series of trap doors leading from one escape route to another. This is why entertainment fails to entertain us: we have too much of it. We have no contrast. Everything is technicolor.

The cost is life. We fill up our space with too many little things and then we are too busy running around trying to keep them all connected, putting them in place, keeping up with them, taking advantage of our advantages. We end up worn out by our own luxuries. A lot less of everything is what we need.

Less food to choose from might help us to enjoy our daily bread without wishing we had gone to the other restaurant instead.

It’s easy to get focused on the wrong things. The world is fighting for your focus, and if you forget you are in a battle, it will be easy to get distracted. If you allow the world to grab and hold your attention, then you’ll spend hours listening to and thinking about the world’s messages – instead of God’s – and as a result, you won’t be able to do what you really want and need to do ( How to Be Your Best When You Feel Your Worst, Casey Treat, pp 34-35).

The ache we feel in our chests, the dissatisfaction with where we are and what we have, the urge that sends us to the mall, to the Internet, to the television or the club or the movie or the concert is not for something more to see or hear or buy or experience. The ache is to do, to produce, to be valuable.

Some of us are realizing that, and we see the results in all sorts of wonderful ways: backyard gardens, home made loaves of bread and preserved fruit, carefully crafted quilts, reinvented vintage clothes, entire marketplaces of hand made offerings from jewelry to toys to furniture to art.

Some of us are still caught in a culture that has yet to slow down enough to acknowledge the ache for what it is. Don’t let yourself be one of those. Don’t let the quick urgent pull of purchasing blind you to the deeper satisfaction of being a producer more than you are a consumer. Add more value to the world than you take away. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable (as you will be if you resist the culture even a small bit) and you will find your life rising up within you, carrying you further than you knew you could go. That’s living.