Doing less accomplishes more

When your goals are so spread out into different areas of your life, you simply do not have enough time or energy to reach them all. You halfheartedly accomplish a few, but the momentum doesn’t pick up because you’re not making real progress.

Radical reinvention shocks the system

You change your life one piece at a time. Anything less thrusts you so far from your comfort zone, you start to panic. I call this “adjustment shock.” Anything new — no matter how good — is uncomfortable until it is also familiar. That is why we have to lean into new ambitions slowly, until they become a natural part of our everyday lives.

You’ll figure out what you really care about

Despite what culture would have you believe, you’re not here to be everything. You do not have to master every single aspect of your life, and feeling pressured to even pretend that you want to is robbing you of your energy to affect change where it really matters. Get crystal clear on exactly what you want and what you care enough about — that passion will help motivate you in the months to come.

Your goals need a hint of realism

A list of huge goals that are so far off from where you are right now seems intimidating. Three goals, even if they are big ones, seems more fathomable.

You can always make adjustments

Your 2020 goals might be accomplished by March. That is a totally possible thing to have happen. It’s not that you’re only aspiring to do 3 things total this year, it’s that you’re focusing on these 3 until they are mastered, and you can be onto the next thing.

Growth is not an isolated event

When you improve one part of your life, it tends to touch everything else. When you raise your standards in one way, everything else has to rise to meet it. Growth is interesting in this way: often when we focus completely on changing one thing, we inadvertently create a ripple effect in which we are naturally motivated to change others, too.

Choosing less than a handful of goals for the new decade doesn’t mean you’re diluting your ambition. In fact, quite the opposite. You’re getting focused and crystal clear on what you want to do, and funneling your energy toward creating real, and lasting, impact.

Brianna Wiest

“The first thing you get is LEARNING. When you ask new questions, when you try new things, when you take constructive risks, you can’t help but learn. The American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments, the better.”

The second benefit of constructive risk is SELF-ESTEEM.  Champion boxer Muhammad Ali spoke about that. He said, “The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” In other words, it’s difficult to have self-esteem if you’re not growing.

The third benefit of constructive risk is CONTENTMENT. As you go through life, you will have millions of choices, and you will have millions of decisions to make. All of those choices and decisions involve some degree of risk, but some risks are not worth taking. Some risks are just plain foolish.

However, there are lots of choices you should make, and lots of risks you should take. If you don’t take those particular risks, you won’t be content. In those cases, it’s risk or regret. You either do it or wish you would have.”

Dr. Alan Zimmerman