how to actually believe you can reach your goals?
The term “reaching our goals” implies a few different things for each person. It most certainly comes with a sense of fulfillment and a feeling of success.
A lot of us think we can reach our goals. There might be a plan involved with steps to get there and habits. But there also could be a big part of us that doesn’t believe it. That doesn’t think we deserve to get there or that it actually is an achievable goal.
To an extent, we might even get to the goal and think that it wasn’t thanks to us, that it wasn’t our hard work or that we didn’t deserve to get that far and that it was just pure luck.
I want to step aside for the narrative for a second and ask for you to question if luck is really that bad, and that if the privilege of getting where you want to be with the help of other people makes us less successful.
What does success mean to you?
On the western side of this globe, the individualistic culture is valued above everything. Those that do things alone are praised, and also that do things fast. I am not saying that this is a bad thing either.
It’s cool that people achieve cool things, and it is certainly hard work. But demonizing getting there with help, with a team with a support system just because we didn’t do it all by ourselves or because the success isn’t so “bibliographical” doesn’t mean that you didn’t do it.
To trust that we can reach our goals and that we can get to the success that we desire, or whatever it is we desire in life (believe it or not, not everyone aspires for a life of success or money) we also have to believe that we deserve the support we need to get there.
There is an impostor syndrome factor in all of this.
Let’s talk more about deservingness.
Think of people in your life that deserve the things they have. What qualities do they have? How do they move in their lives? What is it you see in them that makes you think, mmm they deserve the awesome things that they are receiving from life?
We tie bad events in people’s life to how much they deserve. “Since they have gone through these terrible moments, they deserve a lot and since I have not had such a hard time, I don’t deserve as much.”
Would you tell people you love in your life (your child, your mother) that they haven’t been through enough or suffered enough to desire what they want from life?
The idea that everything has to be hard and that we have to suffer to get to success is an idea that is sold to us, along with the idea of who deserves to feel which emotions and who doesn’t.
How many of us have been told that we can’t feel sad about something that happened in our lives because many people have it worse?
Emotions don’t jump and choose who deserves to feel them and who doesn’t. They are criteria-less; everyone feels them no matter how big or small the reasons for feeling them are.
And the same is for success. When we have opportunities and support, we have to be grateful that we do.
When we have a plan to reach our goals, we need to be grateful that we had one.
It comes down to acknowledging the privileges that you have had that helped you get where you are now, and feeling grateful for them, not guilty.
Self-trust and what our mind tells us
We are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you constantly tell a child that they are shy, they will end up being shy.
So how many times have you told yourself that you can’t? That you are not good with money. You’re terrible at planning. That you are not really that creative.
Part of this comes from thinking that either you are something or you are not.
“If I’m not really good at selling, then I am bad at it.”
It takes time to learn skills; it takes time to shift our perspectives.
Some of these labels that we give ourselves eliminate the trust we have in ourselves to do certain things.
Once in a while, it is important to slap ourselves out of our identifiers.
e.g. If I have a book idea. I have to believe that someone like me can write a book. I have to stop believing I am a terrible writer and I have to learn to write like an author.
There is a shift that needs to happen in who we are and what we do. And to do this, there is trust that is involved.
Trust in yourself, and trust that you can do the necessary things to get you there.
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“I have reached my goals and I feel like I don’t deserve to be here.”
Reaching your goals, or getting to success, can feel like 3 things:
- pure excitement and pride in yourself for what you have done
- numbness and questioning yourself and your goal
- fear of what is next, a “now what?” moment
The three of them are very common and very normal, but we expect to feel number 1 when we reach our goals. And when we reach them and we don’t feel that way, we feel disappointed and we sometimes don’t take in our success as something good. As I mentioned, we might feel undeserving.
Here, what needs to happen is a change of mindset.
A change in the way we view success and the way we see our lives.
Sometimes a little pep-talk and a little inspiration can really help to make us feel excited and proud for what we have achieved, whether that maybe be by ourselves or with other people.
If that is you, I want you to pause for a moment. What you have achieved, whatever it is, was important to you. If what you achieved wasn’t important to you, then you know you can achieve something that is important to you at a similar level. You know you can get yourself where you want to be, no matter how much time that takes.
I know that sometimes we don’t get that pride moment because, as many people say, success doesn’t happen overnight.
There sometimes isn’t a marker that shows that you have achieved your goal. But when you eventually realize that you have, you deserve to feel that moment of happiness and excitement for what is going to come next.
If later you feel dread or fear, that is normal, and that is okay.
The unknown can be scary. I just want you to know that everything will be okay, and if it’s not, you will be able to deal with it. I don’t know you, but what I know is that you are human and that you deserve to be content and that you can reach your goals.
That being said, here are 5 prompts that you can use to believe you can reach your goals:
- Why do you think you, out of all people, can’t or don’t deserve to reach your goals?
- When and why did you start to tell yourself this story?
- Shift this story to one in which you trust yourself to get to your goals. How would you talk to yourself? What would be the story?
- Make a plan to create a plan to get to your goal? What would be a simple step by step to get there?
- How will you celebrate the moment you get to this goal? How do you want to move forward after this (if is you want to move forward)?
I hope that this blog, along with these questions, has helped you realize you can do it, you can get to where you want to go. It’s okay to have doubts, and it’s okay to be afraid of the things that you don’t know about the future. Just remember to not put yourself down because of these fears.
The unknown is scary but is also so full of possibilities.
