7 Steps to Knock Out Goals: the wonder years, netflix, and personal reflection

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The dynam­ics that make the col­lege life mem­o­rable, life-changing, and just plain unusu­alare plen­ti­ful. There are more all-nighters than most lives will ever see again. There are more peers, friends, and dates than almost any other life stage will bring. There’s home­work, drama, breakups, first dates, foot­ball games, houses full of guys, houses full of girls, less house­work, more ramen noo­dles, and lots and lots of social deci­sions. As a col­lege stu­dent in the early half of the first decade of the twenty-first cen­tury, there was a whole new piece to col­lege life: access to nostalgia.

Nos­tal­gia

We were chil­dren of pop cul­ture, and now our mem­o­ries of youth are jam packed full of toys, tv shows, car­toons, movies, songs, and cloth­ing choices (seems more appro­pri­ate than “styles”). For the first time in our lives and really for the first gen­er­a­tion ever, the mem­o­ries of child­hood started pop­ping up on store shelves. Mem­o­ries could now be pur­chased for $30 to $40 on DVD. Shows we loved as kids no longer had to be fuzzy rec­ol­lec­tions of yore, but instead could be vivid view­ing choices of now. Watch­ing Boy Meets World at any given moment had become a real­ity. Now it was a piece-o’-cake to try to remem­ber exactly how Opti­mus Prime died in Trans­form­ers: the movie.  Wasn’t there a kid who would climb a lad­der into Clarissa’s room? What was that show with the gnome who was a doc­tor and rode around on a fox help­ing those in need, big or small? Was Fer­gie really on Kids Incor­po­rated? Do I remem­ber Leonardo DiCaprio squar­ing off with that Mike Seaver char­ac­ter on a sitcom?

The Won­der Years

As we early twenty-first cen­tury col­lege stu­dents have con­tin­ued to grow up, the access to nos­tal­gia has become even cra­zier. YouTube really came along in 2005, chang­ing video for­ever, and Net­flix is flip­ping the home video world on its head as we speak. This is all to say that Net­flix brought a real treat into my life in the last few weeks. The Won­der Years, as pre­vi­ously men­tioned, was a lust­fully nos­tal­gic des­per­ate desire for my roomies and me in our col­lege days.

As our child­hood was return­ing with each DVD sea­son pur­chased (It turns out a lot of the shows I loved as a kid were com­pletely stu­pid, like Voltron. It’s just a patch­work of two Japan­ese shows into a less gory Amer­i­can­ized ver­sion of the Japan­ese ver­sion. Pretty weird and I have no idea how I missed that), we zeroed in on The Won­der Years as THE core of our nos­tal­gic sat­is­fac­tion. Just think about that show: the youth­ful angst, the his­tor­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant events, and the beau­ti­ful reflec­tion on a sim­ple child­hood in a com­plex time. We wanted that show badly, and we researched reg­u­larly in hopes of grab­bing it the day it came out. It never did. Appar­ently there were some licens­ing issues with the music. I guess if you have great music lit­ter­ing your show it even­tu­ally screws you over. It was prob­a­bly that Bea­t­les song that Joe Cocker redid that became the theme song (“With a Lit­tle Help From My Friends”). Great jam. Who knows if it was the cul­prit (Paul?), but as I noticed a few weeks ago, every sin­gle episode of that show is at my fin­ger­tips stream­ing on Net­flix. It’s almost too amazing.

I think we all would not only ben­e­fit from, but also love the oppor­tu­nity to nar­rate our most impor­tant youth­ful moments and dis­pense the wis­dom of our hind­sight upon all who would watch (The Won­der Years nar­ra­tor is Marv the tall Wet Ban­dit in Home Alone, FYI. Look it up). Reflec­tion is a beau­ti­ful thing, but can be per­son­ally tor­tur­ous. We real­ize our good moments and our bad moments, our dreams found and our dreams lost, things that we have and things that are gone (youth), and as I’ve been rolling through year num­ber 29 I’ve par­tic­u­larly expe­ri­enced the joys and tor­tures of reflection.

7 Steps to Knock Out Goals

I’ve taken stock of my life this year. At times it’s thrilling to count my inven­tory of expe­ri­ences and at times it’s dis­cour­ag­ing to tally the shrink­age between my input of dreams and goals to my out­put of dreams achieved and goals accom­plished. Here’s the deal, the paral­y­sis that comes with the sad­ness over unac­com­plished dreams isn’t valu­able mov­ing for­ward. So here’s my plan:

1. Take Stock: Where am I at? How have I done to this point? What’d I nail? What’d I smash my thumb with the ham­mer? Where have I com­pletely whiffed?

2. Accept It: This is where I am. Feel the pride. Feel the dis­ap­point­ment. Accept that it’s true.

3. Make a List: Cor­ral all of my dreams and goals. All of them. Easy, medium, hard, totally bananas.

4. Pri­or­i­tize: What’s first (make it easy)? What’s sec­ond? What can I do in a day? What can I only do over time?

5. Focus On ONE and Make It Easy: Get an easy win under my belt. It may involve rear­rang­ing the pri­or­i­ties. Feel­ing suc­cess will breed more suc­cess through increased con­fi­dence and belief in my plan.

6. Move to Num­ber Two: Go get it.

7. Dom­i­nate the Next Phase of Life: Okey dokey.

I think we’d all love the oppor­tu­nity to be Kevin Arnold in his won­der years, sit­ting back, reflect­ing on life, dis­pens­ing advice, and enter­tain­ing in the process. Using our own sto­ries to help oth­ers is addict­ing for all of us, but it’s a lot more enjoy­able if we can reflect on our lives and smile at the end. It’s even bet­ter if we can smile all the way to the end.

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Goals Can Be Undoing. Let’s Regroup.

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Project 29 got off to an incred­i­ble start. I laid out my plan. I received lots of won­der­ful feed­back and encour­age­ment. I was moti­vated beyond belief. Then two obsta­cles struck.

Per­fec­tion­ism

First, I found that in my writ­ing I was being too much of a per­fec­tion­ist for a new ven­ture. I stacked up posts that I wanted to go back and re-read to make sure I was com­mu­ni­cat­ing my points well.

Obsta­cles

The tran­si­tion toward really expos­ing your thoughts pub­licly and with­out the oppor­tu­nity to clar­ify — as in a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion — - was sur­pris­ingly chal­leng­ing. I’m a pas­sion­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tor and I was let­ting my pas­sion to com­mu­ni­cate clearly and enter­tain­ingly get the best of me. It’s funny how great inten­tions can become great obsta­cles when per­fec­tion takes priority.

Busi­ness Travel

The other obsta­cle was that begin­ning in Jan­u­ary, for the first time in my life, I started trav­el­ing for work, and I was gone a lot through the end of March. My care­fully laid out plan of attack on year 29 was turn­ing to Swiss cheese. Holes were appear­ing in the plan at every trip. Main­tain­ing my estab­lished work­out sched­ule, study sched­ule, explor­ing sched­ule, and writ­ing sched­ule were impos­si­ble. Per­haps the big sched­ule could have been main­tained if I was fur­ther into my project with more firmly estab­lished habits, but I just wasn’t.

Lessons Learned

I’m using these chal­lenges as a launch­ing pad and a real­ity check (don’t worry, ‘real­ity checks’ in my world aren’t ‘pes­simism checks’). The real­ity of life and goals is that we get derailed from time to time. We have to try our hard­est to main­tain our com­mit­ments while prepar­ing our­selves to flex when we fail. Fail­ure is just going to be part of the deal, and if we haven’t read­ied our­selves to deal with it, then we won’t get very far. I’ve been read­ing about how to deal with just this topic.

So Where’s Project 29 At?

This whole lull is going to be a good thing. I’ve taken a step back and read a lot about moti­va­tion, goal-setting, and habit form­ing. I’ve researched effi­ciently learn­ing new skills. Basi­cally, I’ve improved my knowl­edge and under­stand­ing around what I’m really try­ing to accom­plish here.

We, as a cul­ture, strug­gle with tran­si­tions. The new and uncer­tain can over­whelm us. We strug­gle with noise. The dreams we have and the goals we set forth to achieve get inter­rupted by all the noise. We also loathe aging. You know what, loathe isn’t the right word. We fear it. I want to fight tooth and nail against all that. I want to dis­cover how we over­come. How do we become the peo­ple we so wish to be?

Does any­one have insight into over­com­ing obsta­cles to achieve goals?

 

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50/50 the Movie, Youth, Cancer, and Questions

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This has been a reflec­tive week­end that began with the movie 50/50. The premise, for those who aren’t famil­iar, is a 27 year-old, played by Joseph Gor­don Levitt–you remem­ber Angels In the Out­field–is diag­nosed with can­cer. He has an over­bear­ing mother, a father with Alzheimers, a crude best friend–Seth Rogan, a hesitant-to-involve-herself girl­friend, and an under­stand­ing that patience with his form of can­cer have a 50% chance of sur­vival. I found myself com­pletely taken by try­ing to grasp what that would be like.

QUESTIONS

What is it like to be a guy still on the cusp of life who finds him­self on the cusp of death? What are the ques­tions he’s ask­ing? What are the things and who are the peo­ple he’s think­ing about? What is he fear­ful of miss­ing? Is there peace? Is there fear? Where and how does he spend his time? What is he gain­ing through this unique psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence, and can I gain the same things by seek­ing to under­stand his predicament?

IT GOES ON

Per­haps I’m over-thinking the whole story. We go through this life with only so much capac­ity to grasp the com­pletely crazy, the over­whelm­ingly dif­fi­cult, or the entirely unex­pected, and maybe in those times we real­ize that there isn’t always a rea­son­able expla­na­tion. Years of life aren’t dis­trib­uted based upon a clear set of cri­te­ria that we can ref­er­ence to clear up why we find our­selves wher­ever we find ourselves.

I thought of Robert Frost’s sim­ple take which is to “…sum up every­thing I’ve learned about life: it goes on”, but what about when it doesn’t? I think he’s say­ing that we all have in com­mon, no mat­ter how good or bad, that whether or not we make it through, we will con­tinue onward. I hear what you’re say­ing Frost, but for every sin­gle one of us that won’t be the case one time, so what about then? What about when your one time that life doesn’t go on hap­pens when you’re 27? Life is just con­fus­ing, but not as con­fus­ing as death.

I’m not really sure what to do with the storm of thoughts 50/50 sparked. I don’t have any clue what that sit­u­a­tion would feel like. It’s a healthy thing to pon­der, and I think an age old les­son applied once again here. That les­son: I need to do more appreciating.

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The Outline: Goals, Dreams, and Our Ever-Changing Lives

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The past week has found me attempt­ing to cap­ture the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a year in order to ful­fill the task of my twenty ninth. What can 366 days–I’m lucky to get leap year for this– yield a per­son when seek­ing to squeeze every drop of juice from them? A task such as this takes a plot and a vision to inten­tion­ally take advan­tage of each of those 366 days.

I’ve come up with some categories:

  • Grat­i­tude
  • Adven­ture
  • Income
  • Fit­ness
  • Artis­tic Expression
  • Lead­er­ship
  • Uncer­tainty

It’s likely that these cat­e­gories will evolve over time, but con­sider this the ini­tial draft of the list.

Grat­i­tude

Grat­i­tude is always a good place to start. I’ve lived 29 won­der­ful years and have had at least 52 peo­ple con­tribute to mak­ing them that way. My life’s con­trib­u­tors deserve a let­ter express­ing my thanks. I will write one hand-written let­ter plus an email of the same letter–easier to save–per week for the dura­tion of my twenty ninth year.

Adven­ture

There are adven­tures that have been wast­ing away while dan­gling on my to-do list for far too long. At 29, I won’t stand for it any­more. There are too many adven­tures to be had in this life to not get some checked off.

Income

At first glance this cat­e­gory seems sim­ple, but I’m one to explain things. As a 20 year old I began to for­mu­late entre­pre­neur­ial dreams. I was a sopho­more in col­lege seek­ing my next pas­sion. The pas­sions of my life–sports–had become less a part of it than ever before, and a melan­choly tone had set­tled itself upon me as I fought to find what was next. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and felt inspired to see if I could pur­chase a house. I ben­e­fited from naivete in that my every attempt, regard­less of suc­cess or fail­ure, made me feel proud of try­ing. I was swing­ing for the fences, and if I struck-out the skin came off no one’s nose. I was a col­lege kid with big eyes, big ideas, blind opti­mism, and few real respon­si­bil­i­ties. As a 29 year old, I’ve now spent time and energy in pur­suit of more knowl­edge and more entre­pre­neur­ial skills. The weight of fail­ure has set­tled ago­niz­ingly upon my shoul­ders. With each dream comes a healthy dose of “real­ism”. With each fail­ure comes a mul­ti­tude of ques­tions, from myself, about whether I have what it takes. The “Income” cat­e­gory is where I envi­sion a return of the fear­less­ness of a 20 year old being assisted by the wis­dom of a 29 year old.

Fit­ness

Fit­ness is some­thing that has cap­tured my atten­tion for years. I turned my atten­tion to under­stand­ing how to achieve an elite level of fit­ness years ago, but the strug­gle has been to make its pur­suit a pri­or­ity in my life. I believe a sel­dom rec­og­nized obsta­cle we all encounter dur­ing our daily inter­nal feuds over get­ting to the gym is guilt over mak­ing fit­ness a pri­or­ity. It feels like the peo­ple in our lives should always be the pri­or­ity. This cat­e­gory can be summed up as my attempts to bat­tle that obsta­cle and make fit­ness a priority.

Artis­tic Expression

An appre­ci­a­tion for ther­a­peu­tic activ­i­ties has found its way into my psy­che in recent years. Never before had I really under­stood the concept–perhaps because as a kid I did a vari­ety of things–but as one ages it becomes increas­ingly easy to nar­row his activ­i­ties so far that he cuts out past joys. Draw­ing was always some­thing I strived to excel at, then some­where along the line I just stopped. I think my soul needs me to do some­thing artis­tic again.

Lead­er­ship

Lead­er­ship is a topic I have had a pas­sion for for some time now and have pur­sued an inno­v­a­tive under­stand­ing of it. Mar­ry­ing the con­cept of lead­er­ship, the con­cept of entre­pre­neur­ship, and the con­cept of mak­ing dif­fer­ence in some cre­ative empow­er­ing way is a very excit­ing con­cept to me.

Uncer­tainty

This is a catch-all, because I have become a strong believer that the great­est sin­gle cul­prit in putting off dreams is uncer­tainty. I’m deter­mined that fear of the uncer­tain will not direct my life.

The posts will be pick­ing up and I’ll pro­vide a link to the cal­en­dar of the year’s tasks.

 

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Project 29: the twenty ninth year project

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Aging and Change

I just turned 29 on Jan­u­ary 17th and I’ve been pon­der­ing aging. It’s become our com­m­mon under­stand­ing that aging is a painfully slow, yet even more painfully fast, process of grow­ing old and rick­ety, senile and for­get­ful. We spend our lives long­ing in vain for the pre­vi­ous year, the pre­vi­ous decade, or the pre­vi­ous life stage. At the one-quarter life mark we switch from look­ing for­ward to look­ing back, never spend­ing a day look­ing here at the now. Each year just as we begin to adjust to our new age, to wear it and per­haps own it, the loom­ing annual “cel­e­bra­tion” strikes, again putting our per­sonal aware­ness out of kilter.

I’ve spent a life strug­gling with whether to accept the things I see around me that just don’t sit right. Rush hour baf­fles me, that we all live trapped in the same sched­ule so much so that we clog the arter­ies of our com­mu­ni­ties twice a day– not to men­tion we get pissed off in the process. This same lens has led me to rebel against age.

The Dec­la­ra­tion

I have made a deci­sion. I will not limp out of my 20s and into my 30s with a wim­per and a pout, I will not let my 29th year be a year of slouch­ing my shoul­ders and mourn­ing the goals not achieved and the tasks not accom­plished, and I will not live a life that uses pre­cious time long­ing for the things past that I failed to appre­ci­ate only to not appre­ci­ate the things present until they have become the newest things past.

I will live a life anx­ious for today peer­ing to what could be tomor­row, I will live a life that eeks out every drop of every age I have the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence so that when it comes time to turn the page I have no more use for the pre­vi­ous num­ber, and I will live a life built on what I have or what I could have, not on what I don’t have or what I did have. It all starts today. Project 29: the twenty ninth year project

The Project

I want to take the time to be pur­pose­ful in mov­ing for­ward and to reflect on what my move­ment means. This isn’t a project about being dis­ap­pointed where life is at the final turn of the 20-somethings. This isn’t about squeez­ing in all of my per­sonal expec­ta­tions or goals before it’s too late. This def­i­nitely isn’t about mourn­ing the end of a sig­nif­i­cant decade in the tale of one’s life. This is a project about tran­si­tion, inten­tion, and hope. It’s a project to use a time when we tra­di­tion­ally mourn time past to flip the script and make it a cat­a­lyst toward dreams future. Let’s do this thing.

In the com­ing days I will lay out what I’ve got in mind so far for the adven­ture that is Year #29.