Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
Have you had a rough time? I don’t know if it’s just me. I don’t feel like it is. I’ve talked to a lot of people that are having an equally rough time. What I find is that every one has their own rough season, but we all have them. For some of us it lasts months, for some it lasts years, but all of us go through a period of time where the successes may be small or few and the defeats are giant or plentiful (we’ll get to the difference in a bit). Part of me would like to think this is like a COVID hang over. We tried to fix a national emergency by throwing money at it and now we are paying the price for that economically and socially. I think that even if the problems are not really economical in your life it has a trickle effect into the rest of our psyche that causes this time of utter frustration and disappointment. So I have chosen this as a time to regroup. And what better time than my favorite time of the year, Business Planning Season. This year I want to talk about a season of giving up!
Let’s talk about the idea of giving up first. If you are not someone who has ever done this, maybe it will feel difficult at first, but I can guarantee it will be liberating. This is the act of simply walking away, changing direction, putting it out of your mind, setting it down, moving on, finding a different thing. Whatever it is you choose to give up on, there are no hard feelings, no regrets, and no disappointment. It is a conscious decisions based on some serious, deep inner-work. You make an educated decision to do something else.
Spend some time considering what you should give up on. Look at the things in your life that you really want. If you make a Life List or a Dream Board or whatever you call it, what is up there that you are working hard to achieve and it just isn’t happening? Is there one thing in particular that you have strived for and met with serious pushback or failure? Is there something that you are gaining no traction towards accomplishing, even though you have made some true and honest attempts. I could take 5 blog posts helping you figure out what items to give up on, and maybe one day I will, but for now I’ll give you the abbreviated version. Look for the following 5 categories: 1)Stressful. 2)Impossible. 3)Improbable. 4)Infinite. 5)Unimportant.
This exercise takes a lot of honesty and deep diving into your heart and soul. That’s why it is called inner-work (if you’re not familiar, read this book by an amazing couple). What I’ve noticed is that when we meet with adversity, we tend to focus on fixing the outside issues, like a new job or a new lover, but we avoid fixing the inner issues. It’s kind of like when you have a cold. Do you take medicine to fix the symptoms, or do you focus on fighting the germ? Often, we spend all of our energy on the symptoms and little attention goes to the cause.
- STRESSFUL: Is there something out there that you have been trying for maybe even years to do and it just isn’t happening?
This is where my situation came from. I had been trying, hoping, praying, working, for one particular thing in our family for 5 or 6 years and it happened! But then it was ripped away. I’ve gone through the why’s and who’s and such and it’s exhausting! One day I woke up and said “I give up”! What I was beginning to notice is that one desire that I had in my heart was not shared by my husband or any other member of my family, or likely even my friend group. And it didn’t really align with all of my other goals. I was truly alone in this desire and that had created so much stress in my life that it was doing more harm than good. It was as if God gave me a glance at the life I would have if he granted that prayer so I could understand how it wasn’t going to be what I had hoped it would be. The stress that it had already created in my life from trying and suffering alone was enough. Giving up on this one thing would do me way more good than ever achieving it. Most of us are not alone in our life, so when we are working towards a particular goal, if those that we do life with are working towards a different one, it becomes like tectonic plates. The friction in our relationships may be building. There may be a collision or a separation that can be catastrophic from just that one issue. That additional stress doesn’t disappear with the satisfaction you will get if you achieve that goal. It would be better in the long run to just GIVE UP!
2. IMPOSSIBLE: Is there something on your Life List that will require a complete restructure of elements that you truly enjoy?
I believe there are people out there that can achieve their goals with hard work. I am firm believer in hard work. I almost think that is about the only thing I do well! And maybe natural talent isn’t as important for some as it is for others. But if you have zero access to the talent required to achieve your goal or the hard work required doesn’t allow for you to achieve other goals, then call it out for what it is and move on! Here’s an example…I wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader my whole chidlhood. I even had the jacket. And though I was a talented dancer and performer, there was no way I was moving to Dallas. I cheered for the Charlotte Rage for a year, tried out for the Honeybees, and decided I had other, more important goals to accomplish.
3. IMPROBABLE: Is there a goal you set that, based on who you are at your core, just isn’t going to happen?
Again, you have to understand who you are to see which goals are going to work. If you are a giver and your goal requires you to be selfish or take, you will spend time spinning your wheels to get to the realization you cannot achieve that goal. Who you are at your core is what all of your goals should be filtered through. There is an exercise in Start with Why by Simon Sinek that I call 7 Layers. I coach it to all of the agents that come to our firm. You begin by writing down the answer to Why? Why do you do that thing? Why do you want that goal? Then you read that answer and ask yourself, But Why? You do that 7 times. By the end you can get to the core of a true why. If your Life List is full of things that do not go along with who you truly are on the inside, then you should GIVE UP on them and start over!
4. INFINITE: Do any of your goals, based on your current location, look like they are further than 10 years down the road?
Let’s talk definitions for a minute. A Life List is a list of things that you want to achieve in your life time. The items on there may take you 30 years to accomplish. That’s fine! But your Goals should not. We use the term BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). Your BHAG can be something truly wild that would be amazing if you accomplished that in 1, 5, or 10 years. When your goal is too far out, it is very difficult to create measurable steps to get to those goals. Let’s say your goal is to have 5 rental properties in 5 years. That is easy to walk backwards. One property per year means you need to save X amount in year one, make X amount of profit in year 2, etc. We can measure how we get there. If there is a goal in your mind or on your plan that is not measurable or doable in 10 years, rethink the way you are planning to get there. GIVE UP on the current plan and chart a new one with measurable, systematic, achievable steps.
5. UNIMPORTANT: Does anything you’ve been telling yourself that you want to do just not jive with your personality or the rest of your goals?
Here we are, back at this idea of having to truly know yourself to be able to plot a course to achieve goals. If you do not know what drives your or creates happiness in your life or what motivates you from the inside out, then you cannot create goals that are achievable. If you have a goal written down that doesn’t flow from your inner self and true personality you are never going to achieve it. You can spend years trying, but it will not come easy if it ever even comes. Think of having a goal to be a veterinarian, but hating animals. I have met attorneys and doctors that don’t like people, but they don’t ever seem happy or truly fulfilled in their life. When something is important to you, you will carve out time and a path. “Where our focus goes, results follow.” It is so much easier to focus on the things that are important to us at our core. If the goal you are working towards is not worth it, just GIVE UP!
There is a stigma, especially in this self-help world, that giving up is bad. You need to push through, work harder, struggle, be tough. But there comes a point in your life where that struggle is no longer serving you physically, emotionally, or consciously. You are doing everything humanly possible to get there, and this is the key, but it just isn’t getting any closer to being realized. I say this is the key, because you cannot make that decision until you truly acknowledge if you are doing everything within your personal power.
Pick a topic. What have you done this week to get to that goal? What could you have done? What is stopping you?
It isn’t about blaming it on other people. Your goals in life can’t be based on what other people do. I have learned this one the hard way this year. Not even your significant other or family or partner. If you have a goal for yourself that depends on someone else having that same goal or taking some kind of action, you better have had a long, honest, constant conversation with them about how dedicated they are to their side of that goal before you go putting your precious time and energy into striving for it. We cannot control what another human does. No matter who they are. If their goals change and we don’t know it, we will waste or precious resources striving for a goal that is unattainable. And that type of goal is one worth giving up on!
