Success is a side effect. It can’t be captured. It happens when you are doing something you are passionate about and you get lost in the thing you are doing.
I am starting my coaching practice and have set for myself a series of goals in order to reach so that I can start another chapter in my life. As I work toward my goals, doing what I love doing-that is talking to people, getting to know them, and seeing how I might be able to help them, I’m working in my passion and I feel alive, energized, and my life is filled with meaning. To me this represents success.
But when I shift my focus to my goals and begin to analyze them and determine how far from them I am and wonder if I will really be able to reach them, my passion recedes and anxiety intrudes stopping the ease with which I’m going about working toward my goals. Doubt and a yucky feeling take over.
So my question is how can I set goals and work toward them without having the goals infringe upon the work I’m doing and the success I’m feeling while I’m doing it? Through trial and error and being in tune with my feelings I’m finding that setting my goals early on in the month (setting my intention) and then focusing on my activity (working with people to help them reach their goals – this thing that brings me great pleasure) releases the grim determination I can often find myself having when I set a goal for myself.
The other way that seems to help me stay grounded and focused on the present moment and in my passion is my recognition of the fact that I can often set lofty, sometimes unrealistic, goals for myself. Realizing this flaw helps to temper any disappointment I might feel if I happen to fall short. Again, removing my attachment to my goals helps to soften my heart and mind allowing me to be able to go where the flow takes me.
The antidote for the blockage of flow that being grimly determined ushers in for me is knowing that success isn’t found in the achievement of a goal but rather in my working toward my goal passionately and positively while connecting with people in a truly meaningful way.
Photo Credit: Rodney