My accomplishments haven’t brought me lasting happiness.
But the friends, memories, screw-ups, and adventures along the way have.
Some common goals we have on repeat are financial freedom, a house with a picket fence, a lean body, a curvaceous butt, or even that vein running down your bicep (ladies, you know which vein I’m talking about).
We chase things.
Humans need something to strive for, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But a flaw we all share is getting so deep into what we’re working on that we confuse it for our whole life.
If I’m not as lean as possible, I am ugly.
If I eat a burger while I’m on a diet, I’m a failure.
If I don’t have frequent sex, I’m undesirable or a “Beta Male,” whatever the fuck that is.
The common thread in these stories? They’re all bullshit.
They follow the same script.
“If I don’t have , then I’m not ok.” -OR- “I’ll be ok only when I achieve .”
Even if we gain the thing we think will validate our worth:
We won’t get it on our timeline.
We won’t get it in the way we imagined.
It won’t be what we envisioned it to be.
And that will bother us, setting off a cascade of new false beliefs in an attempt to be ok again.
Have you ever seen a VERY physically attractive person focused on fixing the parts of their body they dont like? Or a VERY wealthy person upset over losing an insignificant amount of money?
We look for a pot of gold at the end of our rainbow, but the gold is sprinkled along the way.
Learning we could build self-esteem without validation is a speck of the shiny stuff. That bicep vein is an excellent thing to accomplish during our lives. Hitting a PR lift or your first pull-up are gold coins we pick up as we walk our rainbow.
The pot of gold at the end? At most, it’s your ability to recall so many amazing moments in your life that you gained along the way.
You’re always at the end of your rainbow, extending it as you go. You carry your pot of gold with you, adding coins you pick up along the way.
But would you have started walking it if you didn’t imagine the pot of gold at the end?
Have fun, but hands off me lucky charms,
-J
TLDR: (at the end. hahaha)
We chase things. Getting closer feels good.
But when we confuse things as reflections of us, we tell ourselves poor stories and build false beliefs about lack that will stop us from reaching them.
Having a goal is good. Just don’t get lost. Make your goals into “Ah, that would be such a cool thing to learn, gain, do, or become during my short time in earth-school.”
