So let’s not immediately think about quitting. How about we resize?
As in, resize down for a bit.
Now, shooting for the moon is one thing, excellent even, but trying to actually consume it is utter delulu.
I used to be 100% guilty of this. Now I’m down to 35%… still a work in progress, but progress still.
I’m a person with lofty-arse goals. Random ideas, notes written, typed and voiced in a million different places. My mind is like a thousand open, overstuffed filing cabinets and gigabytes of storage drives with no limits. My name is IreneB and I approve this message.
It’s just how my mind works. She is who she is, what can I say.
And many times, without realizing it, I made my goals so big, deep and intricate in my mind that once the brilliance set in, the complexity came right behind it. And right behind that? Me quitting.
Time and time again.
You either eventually quit dreaming, which could never be me, or you learn to switch things up. Ergo, get better at things as you get older and bolder in your Big Age.
Because I’ve been over the massive goals, the over-pushing ourselves, and the intensity of staying disciplined. It never worked for me because it never fit my real life.
Sure, for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, you can wake up at 5 a.m., grind through the discomfort, before you begin your real-deal paying of bills job, and apparently become an entirely different human being until you hate both versions of you.
But what if the problem isn’t that you don’t want the dream badly enough?
What if the goal was never the whole problem? What if it was the way we tried to get there?
You, me, we, made the first steps so damn big that before long, we talked ourselves right out of the thing we actually wanted.
When the Goal Becomes the Problem
Think about how often we do this.
- “I have to work out for an hour.” Why? If you only realistically have twenty minutes, then do twenty minutes.
- “I need to save $1,000.” Okay. But you’re nowhere close to being able to do that right now. Can you save $50? $10? Start there.
- “I want to write this entire book I’ve got in my head.” Great, but do you have to do it all by some imaginary, too restrictive date you came up with? Or can you write two pages today? Or write one character’s backstory today?
Why is it that we get attached to the idea that if we’re going to do something, we have to do it all the way? Then “all the way” becomes exhausting, inconvenient, expensive, overwhelming, or all of the above, and then what happens? We quit all of it and conclude that maybe the idea wasn’t so solid. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Nope, the problem was the sheer volume plus us.
Okay, fine. Me.
In this Big Age, this second and better chapter, we’re going after what we still want. Abandoning passions, projects and ideas because we made them too damn big ain’t happening no more.
Yeah, sometimes the chunks are still too chunky, and cutting back, shaving things down a little, might be the one “diet” that can actually do us some good.
You Don’t Always Need More Discipline
Shocker, I know.
And discipline, ugh, why does this word never ever feel positive to me? It’s always cold, harsh, and judgey.
- “I can’t stick with anything!”
- “I’m so inconsistent!”
- “I always give up!”
That’s all I ever think of when I hear that word. I’ve gotta find a way to reframe it, or toss it from my vocab, entirely.
The Superwoman in us (me) is a great thing to have. She can be an incredible motivator and partner to Ms. Discipline, but when they team up, now you’ve got two pushy bitches breathing down your neck in the worst way.
That goal that once felt exciting suddenly becomes something you dread. But it wasn’t the goal. It wasn’t that the dream suddenly stopped mattering. It was the approach that was messed up from the start.
So whoa Nelly! Let’s back the eff up and tackle that instead of dropping everything.
Find a starting point that is realistic enough to actually continue, small enough to repeat and manageable enough that you don’t need to become a completely different woman to do it.
‘Make the goal smaller. Not the dream. And definitely don’t quit.’ IreneB
And if you’re now scrunching up your face worrying, “But won’t my timeline stretch?”
Probably.
But a timeline stretching versus stopping completely? Which would you prefer?
Right. Right.
Making the goal smaller meant I could keep moving instead of standing there staring at the whole damn mountain.
What can you realistically do now? Hint: Make it Smaller
Time to look at what’s directly in front of you and do that.
Take several steps back if you need to. Resize the goal, the task, the whole damn thing.
We don’t have to make everything harder, faster, just because we’re oh so serious about it. We don’t have to prove how badly we want something by making the path to get it bloody miserable.
If the dream, the goal, the project still matters, keep doing it.
Making it smaller isn’t giving up, it’s actually how you keep going and showing up.
