 |
 |
|
HAVE GOALS--AND VISIT THEM OFTEN
I thought the hardest thing I’d face after graduating from college was finding enough money each month to pay the insane New York City rent and not drowning in my 14-hour-a-day consulting job. Whoa, was I wrong. Sure, those things were tough, but after a few months, I had them under control--sticking to a strict budget and becoming the ultimate master of Excel and PowerPoint helped.
But then it hit me. The hardest thing, that is. Here I was, out of college, on my very own, making it happen, and not sucking too bad at it. The world seemed completely open, waiting for me to do with what I wanted. It sounds kind of cheesy, but I really felt that way--and that’s precisely when it hit me. What did I want to do with it?
All through high school, my goal was crystal clear--COLLEGE. Do well, score well, get in. No questions, no doubts, all I was focused on was the next step and whether I achieved my goal or not was pretty easy to tell: I either got into the college that I wanted or I didn’t. I did, not into my first choice, but into a good choice, and I was satisfied.
One of the things I didn’t like about high school is that it always seemed like a step to something, a preparation, and not that something itself. When I got to college, I thought, “Well, this is it, this is what I worked for, and now I am going to live it.” But that lasted only a few weeks, a month at most, and after the whirlwind of the adjustment wore off, I was once more chasing after a goal, looking ahead to the future, preparing. This time, the goal was less specific but still somehow clear--do well and get a great job. Well, maybe it wasn’t that simple, but if I think about it, that’s the underlying feeling that I had for the next four years. Sure, I wanted to learn things and figure myself out some more, but it was all in preparation for the next big step--the REAL WORLD.
And so here I was, four years later, in the Real World, with a good job and knowing a bit more about myself. “Phew,” I thought, “Now I get to just live and not prepare for the next step.”
That was one of the stupidest things that I ever thought and I’m lucky that I didn’t think it for too long. Because that’s when it dawned on me--I couldn’t live without goals, no way. But now, I had to figure out my own goals because no longer was there a thing that most people my age did. Most of us went to high school, most of us went to college, but then we graduated and our paths split. We all had to figure out what to do with this great big world and what goals to have for ourselves.
And that’s the thing, the hard thing after college. To force yourself to constantly think about your life, your passions, your interests, and to figure out what goals you want to pursue. They can be so different for all of us--some want to build their own companies, some to have families, some to run for office, some to fight poverty in Africa. But all of us need them, and we need to work pretty hard to figure out what they are and how to get closer to them.
Have goals. Big or small, many or few, but have them. Write them down and re-visit them often. Start now, today, right this moment. Remember that you change and your goals will too--deciding that what you wanted last year is not what you want to go after this year is not being flaky, it’s being honest. Not being able to achieve your goals right away doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, it means that you need to work harder and longer--great goals take a long time to achieve.
So here I go--my big life goals:
CREATE. BUILD NEW THINGS AND BRING NEW THINGS TO THE WORLD.
INSPIRE YOUNG PEOPLE.
BE CLOSE TO MY FAMILY.
STAY IN SHAPE.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.
To achieve the above:
WRITE A BOOK. START A COMPANY.
WRITE ABOUT MY OWN EXPERIENCES. TALK TO EVERY YOUNG PERSON I KNOW. BECOME AN ENCOURAGEMENT SPEAKER. START AN ENTREPRENEURS CLUB FOR HIGH SCHOOL KIDS.
CALL HOME ALL THE TIME. LONGER TERM, LIVE CLOSE TO MY PARENTS.
EXERCISE IN SOME WAY EVERY DAY. DON’T EVER STEP ON THE SCALE.
READ THE NEW YORK TIMES EVERY DAY. ALWAYS BE READING A BOOK, NO MATTER HOW BUSY I AM. FORCE MYSELF TO READ ARTICLES ON SUBJECTS THAT DON’T SEEM TO INTEREST ME TO DISCOVER NEW INTERESTS.
Go ahead, now it’s your turn!
Go >>> Back to NOTES FROM THE REAL WORLD
|
|
|
 |
|
|
