Picture The End and You Won’t Get Lost Along The Way.
The journey may not be linear, but if you don't keep “the end” in the back of your head, you might just fall off.
We all have goals. It may sound “impossible” to accomplish to others, but remember…we all have different experiences; experiences that lead to a our own point of view. Don’t let the opinions of others destroy the canvas in which you paint your desires.
But this article is not about overcoming others. It’s about you.
I’m here to emphasize the fundamental lesson I learned when I let myself cloud my own judgment.
I’m here to warn you about falling into your own trap.
If I could jump into a time machine and tell myself two things it would be this…
Recently, I’ve fallen back and forth on my “passion line”. Not because of laziness, or a clear direction, in fact, my “blueprint” looks near perfect. I’ve fallen off because I let my accomplishments and distractions stir towards the wrong direction.
Remember that straight line from the first image? Well, let’s just say there’s a danger to following your curiosity(goal). When you’re on a mission of finding or chasing your passion, you tend to make choices that have no correlation to the original goal.
Our curiosity can take us places, but without having the end in mind the whole way... you’re bound to open the wrong door.
Step into my shoes, then back into yours.
My career goal is to become a social media strategist. More specifically, for a brand that I’ve always obsessed over as a kid- Apple. When I set out on this journey about a year ago, I created a table- a mental model. In this model, I filled the spaces in-between to achieve the goal. These spaces include external events that must occur combined with personal improvements.
Soon, I hit a few milestones. These milestones ranged from small accomplishments to bigger ones. Small, like completing a course on photoshop, and big things like landing a job as a social media intern for a digital marketing agency. I was on a hot streak. During my journey, a lot of external opportunities started to come along the way. I also started to get into my own head without me even realizing it. As a result of following my curiosity, I fell off the “passion line” when I started to cloud my original goal…
- Coding looks so cool. Maybe I should tackle this on the side instead of focusing on improving my design fundamentals.
- I’m really getting into philosophy. Maybe I should start reading more books in the field instead of continuing to practice my social copy
- Now that I have this job, maybe I can take my foot off the pedal and start doing things I’ve been holding back on.
- After 3 weeks of constant back and forth, I realized that I was not making progress. It’s almost like I hit a plateau by getting lost in the details.
Setting goals is fun, but having the passion to do it gives us both thrill and unbalance.
Plan to the end and don’t let “the end” be clouded by your accomplishments. You might get excited along the way and tackle any challenges after you complete the first one.
Don’t stir too far away from the line.
We all have parallel desires and if we allow our ego to cloud the process, we may suffer the same fate as those who walked away from the “passion line”.
