“If its not adding to your life goal, let it go.
Note: Purposeful side quests build skills for the long run.”

VoyageofSource

Welcome to part two of “About goals in life or how to eat an elephant” 

In part one i took you on a journey to find the answer to the question what is a goal and even more important what is the purpose of life. We looked into religions like christianity, islam and buddhism; we took a short trip to into the mind of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Kant and afterwards i was smitten by the words by psychologist Alfred Adler, who wrote „the main tasks of living: friendship, love, and work.“ 

Did i find an answer to my question? Well not really, but Adler got me inspired. And i ended up putting two little goals on my list of goals which are reading a bit more of Plato and of Alfred Adler.

(If you missed part one you can find it here: About goals in life – or how to eat an elephant – Part 1)

As the last one was more philosophical this post is a bit more personal again.

Oh, maybe i should already put a little spoiler before the actual post: i have no intention of eating a real elephant nor am i asking anyone to do this  (if you were already on your way to call some animal rights organization you can stop now.) So how the heck is it important to talk about eating an elephant anyway? And what has an elephant to do with goals? You will find our if you continue reading.

How to eat an elephant? 

Have you ever thought about eating an elephant? Most probably not. So i would like you to make a little mind experiment with me. Imagine your goal is to eat an elephant. Yes, a real one, of those big grey animals from India or Africa, with large ears and a proboscis (which apparently is the zoological word for its trunk).

For this experiment it doesn’t matter if its a female or male elephant, if it is from Africa or India, if you are not even hungry, or if you are a vegetarian or a vegan. Just picture the elephant in your mind. Got it? Okay, now go ahead and think about how you are going to eat it.

If you have been finding answers like frying, put it on a barbecue, boil it, bake it – yeah, why not. If you find a frying pan, a barbecue grill, a pot, an oven big enough please go ahead and invite me. (And again – please do not actually eat it…)

I guess now you know what i am aiming at. The best way to eat an elephant is piece by piece / bite by bite. (Apparently children are way better at answering this question, but i have never tried it. If you do, please tell me if it is true.)

As i wrote just a few blocks above i decided to read into Plato. It is a nice goal, isn’t it? So lets start and type „Plato Philosopher“ into Google. Boom: 44.800.000 results. Maybe i buy a book written by him instead? Great, so let´s head over to my favorite online book store. Which makes the task not really easier as there are so many results and this is only concerning books with the selected filters „author = Plato“ and „language = english“. I definitely need to narrow it down even more. So maybe i buy a book that states to include the complete works of Plato. There is one available that has „only“ 1838 pages. And then i start reading the book on page 1.

See what i did there? I decided to eat my elephant named Plato bit by bit.

You might now say that this is not really a new insight for you. In this case i would like to congratulate you as you are way ahead of a lot of people i know.

Narrowing your goals down is really important when you start to suffer from mental health issues like depression or psychosis. Especially when you are in an active depressive phase (and i am talking about the medical diagnosis according to ICD (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) and not about a depressed kind of mood) it is vital to set yourself goals. One aspect of depression is that it wreaks havoc with your mind and one of the key symptoms is listlessness. So you will lie in bed and decide to do absolutely nothing. You will stop cleaning your apartment. On a better day you might decided that now its time to clean up. You are motivated and you plan on tidy up everything. In one day of course. I can assure you that soon you will very frustrated as you did not achieve your goal. 

I remember one guy i met who told me one Friday that he will clean up his whole basement. When we met again the next Monday he was an absolute mess and doubted his whole self as he did not achieve anything. He said he went down to basement, saw how much work there was and surrendered. The following Friday he decided to take up the task to clean up the basement again but this time he chose to start on one shelf. And on Monday he was very happy and content as he achieve his goal.

I have a colleague who sometimes looks at the pile of work on her desk and gets absolutely desperate as it is so very high. Every time this happens i tell her to think of the elephant. And every time she laughs and gets back to work a little bit more relaxed, just starting by the thing on top of the pile and working herself through it.

Setting little goals for myself helped me getting back on my feet again and to be completely honest on some of the days my only goal was to get through it without breaking down.

Those of you that are familiar with project management now will most probably think: yes, of course, a goal has to be SMART. For those of you that are not, here is a little summary

Goals according to project management have to be:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).¹

Professor Robert S. Rubin ( Saint Louis University) has stated that goals not only have to be SMART but SMARTER. He added the E for Evaluated and the R for Reviewed.²

I really like this addition. And as i set the goal to publish this post this Tuesday (which i successfully achieved) it is almost time for you to do the evaluating and reviewing part.

Thank you for your time and for reading my thoughts

Take care

A.

Inital quote by VoyageofSource. Follow on instagram @voyageofsource.