This cycle of wanting and expecting it all, then getting betrayed by real life… it reminds me of a foundation of mindfulness: live in the present moment.

The more time you spend imagining how great it would be if reality wasn’t reality, the bigger the risk of losing track of the important things in your life.

Now, here, your current abilities, your current relationships — that’s a great place to start building your goals from. Building goals this way needs keen perception of reality, which will end up helping with execution as well as goal setting.

And then when you exceed or fail your goals, you won’t feel elated or defeated. You’ll know why it happened, because everything you’ve been doing was grounded in the here and the now.