We’ve spent the past month looking at what it takes to reach for our goals. We’ve set up our goals and planned out how we will achieve them. We learned to accept our failures and we began the first of our journey. Now comes the most important part. Don’t. Stop.
Every year I set out with the same goal; go out there and lose weight. Every year I manage to successfully reach that goal and yet I find myself restarting year after year. Why is this? Maybe it is because there is something finite about a goal. There is a finish line. So every year when I crossed into the weight threshold I desired, I simply stopped trying to lose weight. After all I was done right? I had achieved my goal. So I stopped eating right, I slowed my exercise routine and eventually I had undone all of my progress. What I realize now is that I was failing to set up goals for the future.
Could you imagine if your favorite football team scored the first touchdown of the game and then simply packed up their equipment and left? Their goal is to score points yes, but more importantly they want to win the game. They know that they will not be able to achieve victory with the first play or the first score. To win they must first achieve smaller goals. Score points, execute their plays, perform at their best. The road to victory is paved with a hundred smaller steps.
Reaching for and achieving your first goal is an important and crucial step towards achieving your dreams. But it is just a step. If you want to achieve your dreams you have to keep pressing forward. There will always be another goal that you can reach for, there will always be another milestone you can pass. When you finally do achieve your dreams there will always be new dreams to imagine, new depths to explore. This is why I constantly refer to dreams as a journey. They only end when you want them to.