Picture this, your dream life so vivid. You know what success smells like and how it tastes when you get there. This dream is so real and it has provided you the motivation for you to tackle challenges left, right and center. For a while there you thought you could do anything, your dream was so real and tangible. It was fresh and exciting and then life happened. The time between the initial dreaming and the finish line keeps moving. And it’s all starting to seem impossible.
No matter how many boxes you check, bridges you cross, to-do lists you conquer; when you stop and assess your progress you just don’t seem to be getting to where you want to go. So, here is how to keep going when all hope seems to be lost because I want you to stop feeling stuck and get inspired! This is how to keep going when reaching your dreams seems impossible.
When Reality Strikes – You Aren’t Going Anywhere Fast
You’ve been working away doing all the tasks that make sense and are pertinent to you achieving your dream. Maybe it’s a promotion or learning something new, starting a new hobby, building a house or a relationship. You have a picture in your mind about where you want/need to be. It might be in vivid color with so much detail you can just feel it. But when you measure where you are now today and where you want to be there is this huge gap and it feels like you’ll never get to that dream picture.
This reality check normally pops your balloon and deflates your ego. It hurts your pride and it wipes away your hope. In a moment that distance between where you are and where you want to be seems impossibly long and neverending.
You could be tempted to give up. After all, if this is so hard maybe it isn’t meant to be? Then because you’ve started thinking about giving up you get this wave of nauseating hopelessness and you feel lost.
And that direction that you had, the wind in your sails the thing that was propelling you forward and giving your life meaning and providing you things to aim for, tangible little steps on the road to the ideal dreamland all seems to melt and fade away.
But Hope Isn’t Lost – You Can Keep Going
The awful feeling of hopelessness, like you’re never going to get to achieve the dream that you’ve pictured isn’t good. It really can derail you completely if you let it. So, don’t! Importantly, now at this point you have to realize that you need a little breather. You need to recharge your batteries, refocus, and recognize how far you’ve come and that you can keep going.
Easier said than done you might say and that’s true.
Keeping going is hard. Persisting when you’re feeling like you might even be going backward is not fun. But I guarantee you that this hard bit is the bit that gets you to where you want to go.
The hard bits help you, they test you to make sure you’ve got the right stuff inside you to not only get to your goal but do more, be more. This challenging time where you feel lost and stuck and useless is where heroes in books and movies get up after falling down for what seems like the hundredth time and make a breakthrough. And you can too!
Adjust Your Expectations
So, remember how I was talking about that vivid picture you have in your head? The one that’s now informed you that you are behind schedule, and off course?
Well, I’m going to give you some advice that I have learned and that is to make sure that your expectations are reasonable. Having been on the journey toward your goal for some time you will have overcome obstacles you never thought about before you started.
It’s amazing that these details of how much we have overcome and how well we’ve coped with the curved balls in life seem to disappear when we measure our progress against that dream image in your head. Now I’m not saying get rid of that dream image. But rather that you should remember that image is an ideal. The best-case scenario given everything went according to the plan in your head. But no matter how good of a planner you are or the leeway you build into your schedule, life will always get in the way. Things will always be harder than you think and take longer than you ever thought possible to achieve.
Think of the dream goal ideal as a target that is this tiny pinprick in the center of the bullseye. This is the target that you were aiming to hit when you started way back at the beginning of your journey many miles and moons ago. And though you’re doing everything you can, working hard, sacrificing and you haven’t hit that spot… yet…
Why Not Make the Target a Little Bigger?
Your ideal goal might be very specific. Specific is fine, it is even part of having a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) but if you’re losing steam and getting discouraged and even contemplating giving up then why not make that target you’re aiming for a bit bigger?
Reasonably reassessing your goals and dreams on a regular basis is a good idea. But we all get carried away with life and often it’s not until you’re in that hopeless lost stuck state that one stops to think. Not often do we even progress to reflecting that maybe the problem isn’t that our goal is unrealistic or unachievable. It’s just that with life throwing us curve balls things have changed. This means we need to readjust our course, come up with a new plan and even give ourselves a bigger target to aim for.
When you start thinking about how far you’ve come and all that you’ve achieved you will be able to get a better idea of the bigger target you want to aim for.
Give Yourself Some Leeway
It may be counter-intuitive but sometimes we humans put an awful lot of pressure on ourselves to perform and achieve all that we set out to do. I know that I set plenty of unrealistic expectations on myself without even thinking about it. It’s only after I’m stressed out and catching my breath that I acknowledge that I am only one human with a finite amount of time and energy. I cannot do it all, not right now.
So, take a minute to allow yourself a little breather. Celebrate the milestones that you have already achieved. Adjust your expectations of yourself. Manage that ideal picture of accomplishment in your head. And know that if you just keep going eventually you will get there!
I did. And let me tell you when you get to where you want to go after waiting so long it feels really very satisfying indeed. So, don’t deprive yourself of the satisfaction of making it!
Dreams take time to achieve but with hard work, dedication and persisting you will make it a reality!