Dream Within Reality
Setting appropiate goals: Don’t lower your expectations, but segment your aspirations into smaller, more managable and achievable bites or else be doomed to frequent burnout. Focus on the small wins in the day-to-day mission rather then dwelling on the final result. Set the goals that are just beyond your current capacity or situation. This thinking should force you to reverse engineer your long, mid, and short term goals more effectively and by doing so, more enjoyabily.
Setting goals that are too outlandish or over-reaching can be compared to how children versus adults deal with stress. The child has a limited vocabulary both in words and in emotional complexity. They react off of pure emotion and at the most primal surface level. Adults learn nuance over time, being able to identify what stirs their emotions and in turn, reassess a more controlled response to their emotions. Instead of simply being angry, they may ask, am I angry because I’m irritable, exasperated, enraged, disgusted, envious, or tormented?
Another great visual I like to think about is running a mile as a kid. If you were like me around 5-8 years old, I didn’t have a clue how long a mile really was, so when my P.E. coach yelled, “On your mark, get set, Go!” everyone would sprinted off the line aimlessly excited. Within minutes, a mass exodis of hopefull children all brake down to various levels of walking, fake jogging and shuffling to keep moving. That’s because we didn’t have the knowledge to exert ourselves within the appropriate level that the task demanded of us, so we all burned ourselves out in the first few minutes.
As adults, we understand how far a mile generally is and adopt a more prefereable pace when the taking off. The appraisal of our skills a more closely matched to our appraisal of the demands of the situation so that we can adjust the demands we put on ourselves to a more even-paced approach; accepting what we are capable of and maneuvering within those constraints to get the best results.
-Busy Brain