Follow Your Passions

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
- Michelangelo

I’m going to do a lot of talking about goals in the future, maybe even have a goal month, but for now I wanted to talk about the difference between short term and long term goals. In fact, I’d like to suggest that the difference isn’t as big as we think.

I was telling one of my colleagues the other day about a few long term goals of mine, and he mentioned that he didn’t have a lot of long term goals, that he works more with short term goals. And that really intrigued me, because I would have a really hard time coming up with short term goals if I didn’t have any long term goals. But the more we talked, the more I got the sense that we weren’t so far apart - he did have long term goals, they’re just more generalized than mine. I have a lot of short term goals, but I keep them a bit more fluid so long as they are building towards the long term goals I have set out.

One of his concerns about long term goals was that they’d lock him into something he might find he doesn’t fit with five years down the road, and he might miss out on something bigger, better, or more in line with where his passions and strengths lay because he’s so focused on something he thought he wanted a long time ago. That’s a legitimate concern, and I definitely want to avoid things that stifle the ability to recognize the potential opportunities in life as they come along the path. My answer to this, and how I try to avoid getting bogged down in any goal (short or long) is to review my goals once a year. My wife and I literally take some time during our summer vacation each year, and evaluate where we are in all of our goals (both individually as as a couple). Some goals have been accomplished so we cross them off. Some goals have become less or greater a priority, so we adjust their position on the list and if appropriate the duration we estimate it will take to accomplish them. Perhaps most important to recognize, though, are the new things that have come into your life, and the things you want to take off the list because it just isn’t very important to you anymore to achieve them.

Occasionally, we have to let goals go. Three years ago when I was going to school and we needed to bring more income to the house, I started my own web and graphic design business. I built relationships with clients, created a lot of work that I was proud of, and really took a lot of pride and enjoyment from being self-employed. Recently, I took a job with a corporation, and I am extremely passionate about making the most of the opportunities it represents. The new job fulfilled a lot of my personal needs that the side business had been taking care of, I didn’t need the income, and I really began to dislike the work. But I had built relationships with my clients, and I had emotional attachment to this business I spent a lot of time with for three years, so my heart and my head had some pretty heated debates before I finally felt good about letting it go. It easily made the most sense in terms of what will make me happiest today and, I think, in the long run too. But sometimes giving up a goal can be a very emotional thing, and you just have to keep in mind that what you’re getting in exchange will be so much better.

“Self-trust is the first secret of success.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you hear the word “trustworthy”, what is the first thing you think of? My guess was it was something along the lines of someone not lying, someone always telling the truth, and someone, well, worth trusting! But gauging “truth” is something that varies from person to person, and what I want to challenge you to do today is to think about the deeper meaning of truth, and what it means to be able to trust someone.

Be careful with your words and be careful with your “word”. Giving your word that you will do something within specific parameters, and then failing to execute, can be forgiven once or twice, but as a pattern it negates ability to build trust with you. Simply stated, don’t make promises you can’t keep, even if you feel pressured to do so. In the long run, everyone is better off for it.

If you don’t know the answer to a question someone asks, don’t let them think you do. Just saying “sorry, I dunno” probably won’t cut it, but if you say “I’m not sure, but I think I know where I can find out or the people I should talk to in order to get the answer, so let me get back with you next week”, you should be in great shape.

A great benefit of setting expectations at a realistic or even underestimated level, is that it provides a bigger opportunity to overdeliver and really shine. If someone asks you to get a task done by Friday of next week, you say you can deliver it by Monday of next week, and you give it to them Wednesday, you just delivered two days late instead of two days early in their mind. What a waste of an opportunity!

Have you ever been asked to do something you weren’t sure you could complete within the constraints they laid out, but you agreed to it anyway? Maybe you were able to deliver it and maybe you weren’t, but regardless of the outcome, you didn’t communicate with complete honesty to that person about what you felt your capabilities were. Setting expectations accurately as soon as possible in any project or relationship is critical to its health and success, and it gives you the freedom to work within what you know to be your own constraints. Everyone expects the same thing, and it doesn’t exceed what you think you are capable of. See how the truth really can set you free?

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
- Mark Twain

Last week, I tried to break down the concept of giving and offer some different ways to look at the concept. This week, I’ll try to introduce some new ways of thinking about other concepts that will hopefully help you with whatever your goals are in life. If your goals and passions involve becoming a better leader, whatever you want to do with that leadership skill ultimately, I think this week’s posts will be particularly impactful.

Specific topics to be covered this week include: trustworthy people, resolutions versus goals, activity versus accomplishment, communication verses comprehension, knowledge versus wisdom, and keeping the future tidy.

“The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.”
- Susan Sontag

So far this week, I have given many examples of all the great stuff that could potentially happen if you give of yourself, whether it is via time, money, or some other resource. But life is not all happiness and goodness, and without negatives how would we identify positives? With that, I thought I’d spend today talking about the potential worst case scenarios of giving. (Then I will switch my optimism on again and suggest ways to minimize the impact of the worst case scenarios.)

Giving your money to an organization doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to magically go into the pockets of those you’re trying to help. In fact, a lot of people are concerned about giving their money because they’re not sure it isn’t going to just get taken by a corrupt administrator, or some other way that is very much not as you intended. And frankly, I can’t make any guarantees - I’ve worried about things like that myself.

So here’s what I do to get past those concerns. First, I research the organization before I donate anything to them. It’s amazing what a quick Google search can show, and it should give you a bit of a sense of how well that organization operates, how many people they are helping (and how significantly), and what well known organizations you already have built trust with that support the group you’re researching. Second, you can actually get involved in the organization, get to know its leaders, and get a real sense from the inside as to whether the people involved believe everything is “on the up and up”.

In terms of giving your time, well, what’s the downside of that? You don’t end up helping people as much as you’d have liked, maybe? It’s so hard to not help people when it’s in your heart to help, and it’s hard not to be appreciated by others for your efforts. And what would you do with your time instead? Would it have helped people more than what you chose to give your time to instead? If so, heck, go do that instead! The point is to get outside of yourself and enhance the lives of others, and be conscious of it.

“If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach.”
- Margaret Cho

By giving, you’ll make the world better. Maybe not always “the” world every time, but certainly “your” world. And since we’re all connected, that starts becoming one and the same, see?

Leadership is said to be about serving others, so it stands to reason that by giving to others, you are in fact becoming a leader in your community.  The more you give, the more you begin to understand inherently what it means to be a great leader.  The world needs leadership, perhaps today more than ever.

In the book Good to Great, one of the absolute keys to a “Great” leader is that he or she possesses, somehow, near limitless amounts of both confidence and humility, simultaneously.  By learning to go outside of your self and learn ways in which we are all connected, finding what your strengths and interests are and how they can be applied to charitable acts, and activily going out and giving in the ways you are passionate about, chances are you will encounter situations and people who will encourage and hone your confidence and show you reasons to be humble.  Chances are if you are reading this blog post, you’re far better off in life than most of your fellow mankind, and it is hard to truly understand how fortunate you are, how much you have to be thankful for, and not be humbled as a result.

I don’t have unrealistic goals for this blog.  I hope it reaches someone else, but even if it does just reach one someone else and cause a shift inside of them, changing something in them that makes them want to do something nice for some fellow human being, the possibility of that snowballing into a community-changing event is… well, it’s big enough that I’ll keep trying, keep giving.  To you.

How you perceive reality creates your reality.  If you perceive a reality in which you can make positive changes, you’re well on your way to changing the world you live in.