I find the more I care about the goal, the closer I keep it to my heart. The less I want to let it out of my grasp and control. The more I want to savor it, protect it, and foster it. But is this the true limiter for accomplishing what you set out to do? Are you guarding yourself from your own dreams?
With great love, comes a potential for great loss. And a mission for tremendous success can lead you down a path destined for incredible tragedy. When we are on the brink of greatness, our every sense is heightened and we feel more purely. What can be truly satisfying, can also be completely devastating. When caring deeply, vulnerability surfaces and that evokes fear and questioning. How do we fight this tendency? With our own individual weapons of confidence, planning, and accountability.
When setting a goal, how do you approach it? Do you advance with precise caution, anxious trepidation, and a carefully executed defense mechanism? Or do you brashly state your goal, brandish your intention, and make the leap like it was the first time you ever fell in love? You can be fearless.
Think about your goal. Be realistic of the challenge. Know your limits, and then exceed them. Take a jump into the unknown. Blaze a new trail. Be courageous. Set out to conquer that goal with crystal vision and laser focus. Hold that dream as near to you as possible and guard it, until the right moment, then release it, and soar. If you fall, you have already exceeded any of your expectations and you have accomplished much more.
Does greatness come with vulnerability? Possibly. I am beginning to think so.
What is my goal? I am not ready to express it yet, but when the time is right, I will set it free.
Photo by Eric Stampfli
Well said Alison!
Thank you! Looking forward to next week!
What does it take too get to your level? I’m a young cyclist with a lot of potential and a big dream… but I keep doubting myself.
Always keep dreaming, working hard, and being realistic. Set goals and plan!
Way back when I was in high school running cross country my senior year, I set a goal for myself that I thought was out of reach. The team publicly announced their goals at the beginning of the year and everyone thought I was reaching too far. I didn’t care, even when I missed it by only 3 seconds for a 5km run. I think when we are younger, it is easier to take those risks fearlessly, whether in sports or relationships. Just yesterday I posted a quote I love that seems appropriate to share:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt, Sorbonne Paris, France April 23, 1910
I love, love, love this quote! Thanks for sharing. I just had to put it up on Facebook! Truly beautiful. We have all been in the arena…and it is a scary place to be… If only we could still have the childlike faith to make that leap…