You’ll get there eventually
I’m generally on board with the saturation of visual media all over the web (who doesn’t love pretty pictures?), but it’s become nearly impossible to go a day without encountering something like this:
Wait for what? To go surfing against a photoshopped sunset backdrop? Start that project you’ve been putting off? Ask that girl/guy out? As easy as it is to create and share an image like this, it’s just as easy to find millions of people who can relate to its message. Life’s too short to wait on the sandy shores of inaction! Get out there and, uh, go swimming, I guess.
There’s plenty of stuff like this to nag us:
Jeez… Laying it on a bit thick, no? Seeing this is a punch in the gut to finally start dieting, exercise, practicing a hobby, getting more units of production done in a day, read more books, I dunno. I do know that it’s all your fault, though, and until you listen to these motivational quotes your life is forever going to be in a miserable rut.
Not convinced? Here’s a mega-message of “do something with your pathetic life already!” surrounded by similarly inspiring books, no less. This one’s even for sale, if instead of your classic “hang in there” kitty poster you’d like this barrage of guilt-tripping motivation glaring at you with impressive typography all day:
Life is short! The world is huge! You are not your job! Don’t forget your passions (as if you ever could)! You’re the only one responsible for your unhappiness! If your life sucks it’s because you let it! Buy more reminders to stop sucking so bad!
Look, messages like these aren't necessarily wrong. The fact that so many Twitter and Facebook accounts exist solely to share them is testament enough to their popularity. They resonate with people for many reasons, not least of which is our hyper-productive, busy culture and our general fear of missing out. We see a world of endless possibility, of countless ways we can or would like to contribute. We feel overwhelmed by work or family obligations, by our own real or imagined shortcomings, by intimidation from our peers or those who have already blazed the trails we want to follow and whose success seems unattainable. These images are easy to make and spread like wildfire because they really do speak to all of us, for at least something scratching in the back of our minds that we want to see ourselves get done.
It’s not just images and motivational posters. Over the past few years, “productivity tools” (everything from Pomodoro to Trello to RescueTime…it’s even called Rescue Time!) have become so popular and so sought-after that they’ve become an official, and often featured, category on most app stores. In fact, one I've downloaded recently called Rewire even sends me motivational quotes every day, encouraging me to clock in and keep up with a habit I’m trying to form. I even have the option of sharing it and perpetuating the motivational guilt-tripping viral image cycle.
We’re so inundated with “do more!” culture that it feels just awful doing less. There’s everything from the countless studies done on how much work email is checked during weekends or holidays, to the negative language we use to describe having a relaxing evening indoors (Netflix “binging?”). At any point in time, when you pause to reflect, instead of feeling hope and positivity driving you towards what you want to do, you instead feel guilt and shame and worthlessness by pointing a magnifying glass over everything you haven’t done. And that feeling can end up being even more detrimental. Why start if you’re never even going to finish?
While these messages can actually feel motivating at times, the general “you’re not doing enough” mantra they echo is more often than not too toxic. There is one, though, that I’ve found that is truly the simple truth of all our desires and actions:
It’s simple, and it’s true. It’s the clearest path not only to finding out what’s really, really important to you, but how to get there.
I think the most common excuse (based on hundreds of the aforementioned motivational images I’ve seen) is being tired. Just tired. So the question to ask is, why are you tired? Are you sick? Just working too hard? Involved in too many things? What is the root of your excuse?
If you’re sick, see a doctor, exercise more, eat healthy, get enough sleep. Excuse solved.
If you’re working too hard, talk with your employer to adjust your responsibilities to work fewer hours, find a new job, seek a new profession entirely, or just quit. Not as easy peasy, but all the same, excuse solved.
Are you involved in too many things? Then cut something. Don’t want to? Well…
Maybe the things you think are important to you aren't actually that important to you. If it’s easier to continually find excuses against performing an action, then that action must not hold much value for you.
It may feel ridiculous to simplify your passions and desires and life goals in such a way, especially against the often burdening personal responsibilities life throws at us (sick family members to care for, debt to pay off), but it’s the truth. This simple exercise of identifying what you feel is important to you and eliminating all of your excuses really helps to see what’s truly important to you. And what’s amazing about this is, once you identify what’s truly important to you, the excuses end (or become more manageable). Because if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way. Any way. Excuses be damned.
Which leads me to neatly working in the title of this blog: You’ll get there eventually.
Part of the guilt-trip behind so many of the motivational images I shared above is the sense that you must do what you love now! More than half of these things include the phrase “life is short.” If you leave work tired after a long day and see some version of “carpe diem!” in your Facebook feed on your way home, you’re just going to feel miserable about it. It’s already late in the evening, you have to get up early to do it all again tomorrow, the only thing you can reasonably seize before the day is out is something to eat for dinner before hitting the sheets. Even the Onion has mocked our obsession with fulfilling our passions after work in this all too on-point article.
Still, if you've successfully identified what’s important to you, and you’re on board with doing what you can to eliminate or reduce the excuses stopping you from doing it…then when do you actually get around to doing it? The answer really is, eventually. It’s not a cop-out, I promise!
The everyday choices you make cause you to gravitate towards what’s truly important to you naturally. It may be as simple as following a Twitter account that covers your topic of interest so you keep reading about it in your feed, or taking a photo with your phone of a poster spotted in town promoting an event related to it… that you later add to your calendar… and then make time to attend. You’ll gravitate towards what’s important to you by learning about it, talking about it, having conversations about it with others, finding friends and colleagues to share it with, traveling towards it, saving up for it, experimenting with it until you finally attain it.
You can make these choices towards your goal either consciously or subconsciously, passively or actively.
In my own case, travel and seeing more of the world is very important to me. I had plenty of excuses against it, everything from needing to establish a solid career and not wanting to risk taking time off, to not having enough money, to not having any friends able to afford traveling with me, to simply being scared of what could happen. Some excuses, like fear of the unknown, were easy to get over (I’ve traveled plenty, and you learn how to handle nearly any situation the more you do). But some, like time and money, seemed insurmountable.
These seemingly insurmountable excuses were the easiest to defend and the strongest contenders keeping me from what I wanted in life. But in time, they too were able to be solved. I would have liked to begin my solo travel adventures years ago, but I needed to reach a point where what I saw in my savings account made me feel okay with taking a risk as large as leaving my job to take some time off. I needed to get enough calls from recruiters and go through enough interviews successfully to feel comfortable with the skills and experience I had acquired to know I could find employment again, at home or halfway around the globe.
That’s the thing; I didn’t, and couldn’t, wake up one morning, open Instagram, see a motivational image, and decide then that today was the day I book a ticket and just take off. At the same time, I didn't simply sit on my laurels hoping this would magically happen to me or resign myself to a life of unfulfilled desires. Accomplishing my goals was a gradual, but steady and determined, building up. I passively subscribed to social media accounts, newsletters, forums and more about solo travel and working abroad, then actively took the time to read and learn. Instead of whining about what I wanted and how I couldn’t get it (at least not too much…), I talked openly to my friends about my goals and asked people who accomplished similar things how they did it. I reached out to the far corners of the Internet looking for stories I could draw practical inspiration from. I saved and lived frugally. I networked. I avoided narrowing my focus too much on the present or immediate future and thought about how I could blend my goals into longer-term plans. I created a backup plan in case I should fail so that I would feel more comfortable moving forward. Finally, I applied for a working holiday visa abroad, which was granted and gave me a year to make arrangements (but because of all the other planning I had gradually been doing, I only needed another couple months).
I use traveling as an example, but getting there eventually applies to many of my goals. I’m passionate about drawing and art, and would like to make a comic or sell a collection of drawings or be featured in a gallery or something someday. My excuses not to have been, mostly, time, but a lack of marketable talent as well. I’ve resolved these excuses slowly: Passively by following artists whose skills I admire or educational resources for artists, and actively by taking classes in oil painting and figure drawing. Lack of marketable talent can no longer be an excuse for me, now. Time is my only remaining excuse.
If drawing and promoting my art is truly important to me, I’ll make the time. If it’s not, I’ll find an excuse.
If in your mind you’ve drawn a parallel to the fable of the tortoise and the hare, well, that’s all on you. Your life only needs to be as turtle-y or as rabbit-y as you like. If the idea of eventually frightens you as being too slow, then you can review what’s important to you, look at the excuses you have stopping you, and see which ones you can eliminate and take action on immediately. If your excuses are too large to remove just now, you can make more lateral moves to plan how to get around them or remove them at a better time. You can come up with a plan that makes some immediate changes now and eventual changes later.
We have become so accustomed to an over-accomplishing, always-busy culture, that I’m very sure the idea of you’ll get there eventually sounds laughable or just plain lazy to plenty of people reading this. Ironically enough, one of the things motivating me to get there eventually was being upset over not being there right now. But instead of getting there being a joyful, invigorating, empowering experience, I just constantly felt leagues behind where I wanted to be, or felt I should be. Between being bombarded with “life’s too short” messages and comparing myself to the perceived successes of my peers, every step forward felt more like two pointless steps back. It hasn’t been until I finally got there that I was able to look back and realize I’ve accomplished a tremendous amount, and actually made decent time doing so. I was able to get there even with the occasional Netflix binge night. The everyday, every week, every month choices I made guided me to where I wanted to be. And I’m more motivated than ever knowing that the choices I make will guide me to where I want to get. Eventually.
The main point is, life is indeed short, but it isn’t so short that we need to drive ourselves crazy or into depression over what we are or are not doing right now. Life is too short for that!
You’ll get there. Eventually.
Okay, okay, I’ve motivated you into mediocrity enough. If you’re like me, you like listed, digestible action items to think upon. So with that in mind, here are some humble things I’ve done that have helped me get there eventually:
- Set a date on your calendar of when you’d like to get there: Think about the different things going on your life, such as work contracts, rent leases, upcoming trips or events, and with all that into account, set a reasonable deadline for your big thing. It can be as far as two years in the future or as near as two weeks. But mark it on your calendar prominently, even send yourself reminders of its existence semi-regularly. Even if you don’t make your actual deadline, you’ll get it into your head that you need to accomplish this thing soon, and you need to make certain things fall into place before then. I used this technique to plan my exodus into New Zealand. It worked so well, I only needed to bump it an extra month, mostly to deal with clearing out my apartment and booking cheap flights.
- Surround yourself with your aspirations: Depending on what you aim to accomplish, this may land you in the dangerous motivational message territory, but try to find Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Reddit subs, email lists and more that deal with your interests and what you want to achieve. In the case of my artistic pursuits, I follow a hundred or so artists who create the kind of art and sell it in a way that I’d someday like to. I don’t read every single post and end up deleting a lot of what ends up in my inbox, but all the same I do see enough, read through tutorials and learn about their techniques that it remains a constant in the back of my mind that builds upon itself. The next time I sit down to create, I’ve retained everything I absorbed passively and am able to act on it. The reminders themselves serve enough to make me want to make time, even if it’s just five minutes in the margins of my notebook, to test out a doodle technique and push my understanding further.
- Fill the gaps in your knowledge: Your goal may be something huge, something that seems like it will take a lot to get done. Well, what’s the very first step there? What’s next after that? Think in practical terms what you need to do, and find out what you’re uncertain or unconfident about and improve your knowledge and experience with it. You may accomplish this by attending a lecture, taking a class, grabbing coffee with a networking connection, spending a Sunday tinkering on your project, or just sitting down to read all the articles and insights you’ve gathered from your curated feeds. It may not feel like a powerful step forward, but if you’re running on limited time and resources, building more precise knowledge of how to reach your goal will help you discover shortcuts to get there.
- Tell no one. Or tell everyone: There are conflicting theories on whether telling your friends about what you want to achieve helps or hinders in your progress. I’ve found a bit of a blend tends to work. You can and should talk to people you trust or admire about what inspires you. You may discover someone who can help you or has valuable knowledge to offer, or who can even share the journey with you. Conversely, saying “today is the day!” all the time and hoping for a big reaction to spur you on will turn you into a big dreamer crying wolf all the time. Your true friends will of course cheer you on, but forgive them if they’d want to see some evidence first. And besides, if you’re doing what you’re doing for the esteem of others and not because it’s truly important to you, you may run into that pesky issue with excuses I mentioned earlier.
- Be okay with letting go: I’m a very creative person, and I come up with new ideas all the time. Things I’d like to learn, to create, to do. Knowing that there’s actually a pretty strong chance I’d do pretty well in a lot of things doesn’t help with all that burning desire. But on par with realizing that getting there eventually is okay, I’ve had to put my less important goals on the back-burner, even abandoning some projects halfway through. I’ve realized I may even be very old before I get to some of the things I want to do. But that’s okay. I’ve been uncompromising on what I demand to have in my life now, thanks in part to letting go of the things I can enhance my life with later.
Hopefully if you were the unfortunate victim of a motivational message today, you’ve stumbled on this article and feel a bit better about your progress in accomplishing your goals. Eventually isn’t now, but it’s also not never.
Go forth and be gradual.
This is my first full post here on Medium! If you liked it or have constructive criticism, please chime in and let me know. Thank you for reading!
