Being Enough
Achieving goals is important for growth but what happens when achieving these goals are not enough? What happens when the pursuit of these goals have a negative impact on you?
“A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without one, you’ll never be enough with one.”
Achieving goals is important for growth but what happens when achieving these goals are not enough? What happens when the pursuit of these goals have a negative impact on you?
This is what happened to me, at one stage of my life.
I was a business development manager and I was very driven and focused to achieving my goals.
I had list of Big Hairy Audacious Goals and one of these was to be “Maserati rich”.
From a goals point of view, it was everything a BHAG was supposed to be BIG, HAIRY and AUDACIOUS.
But from a self worth point of view, it was terrible and I soon started to experience anxiety and self doubt whenever deals did not go the way I wanted them to.
Because I had placed so much emphasis on this material goal, when things weren’t going my way, this was amplified in my mind as I tried to reconcile my self worth with this goal.
This made me feel like I was not able to achieve my goals and this had a very negative impact on my mindset.
Instead of motivating me, it was crippling me and made me feel I was not enough.
Fortunately, I was able to identify this problem early and I went through a period of soul searching and self reflection to understand what was important to me and why.
This helped me to understand that my self worth should not be pinned to my goals.
I came to this realisation when I revisited a scene in one of my favourite movies: Cool Runnings.
If you’ve not seen this, I highly recommend that you watch it, it’s light hearted, fun and inspiring.
It’s a fictional story based on the debut of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics.
The coach is a disgraced ex-Olympian who had his medals stripped from him for cheating.
In the lead up to the final race, the captain of the bob sled team, Derice Bannock, has a heart to heart conservation with the coach to understand why he cheated*.
The coach’s explanation was that he’d made winning his whole life and that he had to keep on winning, no matter what.
To this, Derice replied, “I don’t understand. You won two gold medals, you had it all.”
The insightful and enlightening answer was: “Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without one, you’ll never be enough with one.
Goals are important, but make sure that you understand yourself, your value and your self worth, and keep these separate from your goals.
Discover a way to Be Enough, because if you are not enough without your goals, you’ll never be enough even if you achieve them.
*Scene from “Cool Runnings” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYRtTqx-IK8
Image credit: Photo by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash