It's the effort

Goals have been a part of our lives ever since we were little.

At first, it was our parents setting goals for us; within 2 years I want them potty trained, 3 I want them walking, and 4 I want them speaking. We accomplish them and they cheer, they smile, they record us. They are happy. They feel accomplished. 

Then you start becoming your own person. You start creating goals for yourself. These goals aren’t so standard anymore. They’re unique, based off your interests, vary with your personality. It’s not longer about learning TO walk but deciding how you want to walk, not just about learning to produce sounds but WHAT you want to sound like.

You create this ideal. 

This ideal gets modified and developed further as you progress through school and then the question of what you want to be when you grow up comes into mind. You ponder about this career at such an early age and I don’t know if that has to do with the education system or parents, but it starts to settle into your mind and takeover. And quickly.

So now you are in middle school, trying to wrap your brain around algebra and in the back of your mind this idea of developing a goal about your future career starts to grow. Maybe you don’t know what you want to do or maybe you know exactly what it is, but either way the thought of the future starts creeping in.

Your mind begins to fixate on the idea of your future. 

Then high school comes around and the ACT/SAT and college applications start to consume you leaving you with even more questions about the future. Where do I want to go, what do I want to be, where will I get to be what I want to be best? You’re sitting in a classroom without having graduated college but you’re already trying to map out your plan for becoming a doctor.

And this pattern started young. In second grade you were taking advanced classes or trying to get the most AR points to start reading at the level of a sixth grader. In middle school you’re taking pre-calc and Integrated science to set you apart in high school. In high school you’re taking APs and IBs to get you college credit.

Every stage of education has reinforced this attention on the future. As though just focusing on the present, being in the grade you’re supposed to, learning 2nd grade material as a 2nd grader just isn’t good enough. You’re supposed to be thinking ahead. 

College? Story repeats. Except it’s worse- this is the last step or one of the final steps toward the goal we have been working towards and thinking about our whole lives - our career. 

We were supposed to be ready for this moment. We were supposed to have it all figured out. Why? Because we were always thinking about the future, we were always working towards this moment that was suddenly supposed to make all of the work worth it. 

So when you’re sitting there, college degree in hand, NOT having figured it all out, you wonder how the hell you screwed up so bad. As though all of the work you did in your past amounts to nothing. The late nights you spent writing college papers , the discomfort you pushed through to establish your presence, the hours you spent studying material you could recite in your sleep. All of it feels valueless. 

This has been one of the biggest struggles I’ve faced in my 20s. It’s a struggle I wish more people vocalized. So I am here to tell you as transparently as I can that I don’t have it all figured out.

I don’t know when my career is going to unfold. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to. 

But what I do know is that there’s something inherently flawed in this concept that none of the work prior to our career matters. 

Somewhere in between passively allowing our parents to create goals for ourselves and dreaming about our future, we told ourselves to shift focus from progress to accomplishments. The idea of the future was drilled into our heads so much that the things we did in the present moment started to matter less. 

Studying for a test? Mind is focused on what the results will be. Preparing for a marathon? Mind is trying to set a PR for race day. Shadowing a doctor? Mind is wondering when you’ll be filling their shoes. 

What about the work that you put into the test, the dedication you put into that marathon, or that passion you gave to and gained from shadowing? Why is it that we mark our success based on where we reach and not how we get there?

We think that once we reach a certain place or a certain ideal, we deserve to feel happy. To feel successful. To feel accomplished. But accomplished should not have to mean having it all figured out. It shouldn't have to mean the final destination. 

Accomplishments are made at the core from effort, from time, from hard work. So why are we basing our levels of confidence and success on the end goal? That means that every second leading up to the goal is worthless so you will only ever be successful when you become that doctor, CEO, or lawyer.

If we can learn to celebrate our efforts, our uncertainty about our future careers and all wouldn’t scare us so much. Because when you celebrate the effort and dedication, you celebrate progress. 

When you were in elementary school, studying your ABCs was difficult. It’s because you WORKED hard that you learned them all. When you were in middle school learning how a number could be imaginary was unheard of but you sat there, you thought, you contemplated, and you WORKED until it made sense. When you were in high school and you froze at the thought of standardized testing but learned how to stay calm and practiced until it felt like a routine, you WORKED until you were no longer scared to take the exam. Although at the age of 20 something these tasks seem supremely easy, at some point they were hard. And at some point you adversed. 

So no. You are not an unaccomplished person in your 20s just because you don’t have an outline for your future. You are a human who has worked hard and deserves to be proud and called successful simply because of that fact. 

As you enter the uncertainty that surrounds the path to your career, as you study for the GRE, prep for interviews, or apply to jobs, keep your end goal in the background and keep that effort in the foreground.

Build your confidence from your effort. 

I’m not saying be proud of anything. Be honest with yourself, work hard, work smart, study, practice, give it time, give it your all. Work hard so that you not only know but truly FEEL that that your effort alone is what should define your success. So when you’re studying for that test, don’t treat your future score as your accomplishment but how hard you’re working right now. 

Your value, your success is a sum. A sum of every effort, every failure, every lesson learned. Not one thing, not one place, not one “goal”, not one job. 

Don’t wait to feel successful until you’re 30 with a career. 

At the risk of sounding cheesy and or melodramatic, I have to emphasize that you don’t know what day will be your last. So why wait until you’ve accomplished such and such until you allow yourself to believe you’ve lived a good, successful life? 

Start putting success in the context of the present, not the future. When we do this, we feel confident in the state we are in, we feel capable, we feel ready to do more no matter how scary, how unconventional, or how hazy the road to the future is. 

“Inch by inch life’s a cinch. Yard by yard life is hard.”