I’ve been thinking of goals lately. Not of the actual goals but more in the setting of them and accomplishing them. Or not accomplishing them. I think I get more more joy out of setting a goal and working toward it (journey and not the destination thing) than achieving it. I wouldn’t know because I haven’t achieved a bunch of them. The struggle is the reward.

Which brings me to self-sabotage. Maybe I’m afraid of success (thanks Jill) and maybe that’s why I don’t follow through on shit. But that’s probably definitely .001 percent true and 99.999 percent me trying to rationalize being lazy.

Achieving a goal is good, certainly. So it’s awesome to set them high but not setting it so high that you don’t achieve it.

I have a lot of friends/acquaintances who definitely like to aim high. Super long endurance events or the ultimate one – SELECTION (cc Tom). Which is cool having long term goals. I have something similar but less impressive, 50 and 100 milers. Which at one point seemed like an impossible goal but really, it’s 50 miles. What’s the worst that could happen?

uh…you could run 50 miles.

The journey, the suffering, is the goal. If that makes sense. As Lao-Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles (they had miles back then) begins with a single step. And lots of bitching.”

I guess my hangups on it are more along the lines of, achieving it may be less fulfilling. Afraid of achieving it. Because WHAT’S NEXT? Maybe my goals aren’t difficult enough. Signing up and running a fifty mile “race” is the goal and I would like to achieve it but my life will not be the worse for wear if I don’t achieve it. Get a medal? Throw that shit in a box. Cool. Achieving the goal isn’t as fun as the training. Running a lot is fun, got it. I guess if I finished the fifty I’d have to try the hundred.

Meditating. It’s not hard and simultaneously the hardest thing ever. Every month I set out a goal to meditate every (among others: floss, leave no empty dishes, make my bed – lol never on this one) day for the month. I can usually get 2-3 weeks solid on the calendar month and then I skip a day because I’m enlightened and shit (self-satisfied). 2-3 weeks in a row is good but then I get weird about having to maintain the streak. See the chart below. Every dot is me meditating at least 1 minute that day.

So many gaps! If only there was a way to not have gaps every day…oh well, nothing we can do about it.

If you’ll see from the gaps I just can’t be bothered. I “want” to get another month of daily practice but on the other hand, I don’t want to give my ego the satisfaction achieving the goal. Who benefits from me checking a box everyday? Me/not me.