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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.