Update Your Goals
August already! We are now well past the halfway point to year’s end. I do not know if you made any New Year’s goals, but I did.
In my first-ever post, published on January 1st, I made a plan for overcoming my addiction to sadness. The plan had 4 parts:
- Detach
- Feel it
- Turn it over to a higher power
- Act
I felt it was time for a review to see if I had made any progress. I also wanted to see if my original understanding of my goals has now changed. So let’s take a look—
- Detach- removing your attachment to outcomes (as in trying to control the situation). This is quite possibly the worst flaw in myself that I have noticed and tried to overcome. I am starting to think that I cannot do it. My post on Accepting What Is was an attempt at unpacking this concept. Detachment has always been hard for me to understand. Detachment in my mind is to distance yourself from something, to no longer love or care about that thing, to become indifferent to its fate (this includes yourself).
This definition of detachment made it feel impossible for me to do. I think that if you care deeply about something or someone, how can you not be hurt? The only way that I can understand detachment now is through acceptance of what is and letting go of how I thought it should be. The solution is to have faith that everything that is happening will someday work out for the best. If this sounds a little Pollyannish to you, I am sorry, but it's the best I can do.
- Feel it- I am not sure this is the best advice to give when it comes to being a chronically sad person. Depending on how you use it, it can be a way of just feeding the addiction instead of a tool for working your way out of it. "People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar." - Thich Nhat Hanh. I think feeling your sadness is better suited for unexpected things that happen, such as a pet dying, where you need to go through a grieving process. Being sad is not bad and should not be pushed aside when valid, just be careful that it does not become the lens through which you see everything.
Always being sad, I think, is more of a spiritual issue (one where we cling to the idea that unfairness will always win) than a human one. Since we get more of what we focus on, we may need to focus on different feelings, such as amazement, gratitude, happiness, forgiveness, and letting go. I will change this part of my plan from a focus on feeling sad to a focus on feeling amazed. "Our goal should be to live in radical amazement, (to) get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed." - Abraham Joshua Heschel.
- Turn it over to a higher power- When I wrote the following, "It is hard to admit to ourselves that we think we know better than God, but each time we start trying to control outcomes for others, we are doing precisely that." - Big Sky Baby. My thought process on including this goal was that since we should not be manipulating the outcomes for others, we could at least let God handle everything and work on ourselves. I have found that you cannot try to manipulate the outcome of working on yourself either. This is where allowance comes in, allowance is reaping consequences that weren't always what you'd choose, and being OK with it. It is closely tied to faith that things will always work out the way that they are supposed to, not the way you think they have to.
- Act- My action plan was to make small, incremental changes to myself, to 'be the change I want to see in the world'. Life happens, as it always does, and these experiences have affected how I see the world and my place in it. I have learned that I thought if I did something good, I was going to get good in return (karma). I was trying to be 'good' so I could manipulate the outcome.
Imagine my surprise when I was treated badly, disrespected, lied about, and targeted by the person whom I was being 'good' to. I know that as a general rule, you reap what you sow. Sometimes, though, you get to be the redheaded stepchild to unhealed people, whether you deserve it or not. "If you never heal from what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you." - unknown. Goodness isn’t a bargaining chip for a reward. It’s a value you hold because it’s who you are, and you must hold tight to it or life will try to knock it out of you. "To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all."- Goethe.
In my defense of changing my goals, I have decided that the following advice is my new favorite: "Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway." - Hunter S. Thompson.
See, there is a quote for everything! Traditional goal setting does not take into account this change of perspective, nor does it take into account the way that other people can hinder your progress. If you need to make changes to some of your goals, please do not be afraid to do so. My revised goals are now-
- Acceptance of what is.
- Focus on amazement over sadness.
- Faith in the goodness and timing of my higher power.
- Steady action toward the kind of person I want to be, even when the path changes.
"Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom." - Alain De Botton. I hope that for the remainder of the year, you will focus on enjoying your life.
Love and Hope,
Big Sky Baby