1 Question to Regularly Ask to Increase Commitment to Your Goals
It’s so easy to set a goal, then forget it and never achieve it. Especially if we haven’t yet built the systems, forged the discipline, cultivated the habits, and internalized the identity needed to achieve them. We’re also okay with forgetting our goals until we find ourselves in a place we don’t want to be in and end up asking “How did I end up here?” and “Whatever happened to where I wanted to be?”
I’ve ended up in places I don’t want to be and failed to get to where I actually want to be.
I let over a year pass until I finally decided to finally start studying Mandarin despite living in Shanghai, China when one of my motivations for moving to Chinese speaking country was to learn to speak Mandarin. I let the same thing happen for learning Vietnamese despite living in Hanoi, Vietnam for nearly three years.
What eventually finally pushed me to learn Mandarin when I finally started learning it again (I studied it in Taipei, Taiwan beforehand) was the fact that I would leave China soon in four months.
But what eventually pushed me to finally start learning Vietnamese, what finally forced myself to follow through on working towards achieving my goals was continually asking myself:
“What am I really trying to do?”
This is the same question also got me to finally resume a daily publishing habit after having wanted to “be a writer” for over ten years.
During moments of reflection, I ask this question not only to restore focus on my goals but also hold my current actions accountable to those goals.
What is most effective about asking the question of “what are you really trying to do” is that it doesn’t focus on what you want. Instead, it focuses on what you’re doing.
Because it’s not the wanting that achieves the goal. It’s the doing.
