Do you remember the feeling of finally achieving long-pursued goals? That’s my today, and let me remind you how good it feels so you can vicariously leverage that drive to double down, try harder, and endure longer.
Today is the day I close on my new house. It’s not a new house; it’s new to me. Today is moving day, cleaning day, and celebration day. It’s not quite over – moving will be a process, but the end is so near as to be a matter of days. I wasn’t sure I would be able to get here, and here I am, finally achieving long-pursued goals.
An Emotional Journey
It wasn’t simply the house purchase that was a long and fraught affair. It was the dissolution of the relationship, the admitting of failure, the imagination of a new future, and the emotional growth and logical insight that were also required.
There’s a process of grief for the death of the relationship, the future, and the identity. For anyone who’s been through it, you know that these are not small things. They take time, space, and energy. Somewhere in the reflection and healing, the moving takes place.
Life presents space for our use many times, while we are working on achieving long-pursued goals.
Space can be a blessing or a barrier. It’s how we use these spaces that makes the difference. Do we seethe in frustration while waiting for the train to finish its journey, or do we welcome the few minutes of reprieve to breathe and reconnect to our soul’s purpose about why we are exactly where we are, doing exactly the right thing?
Internal choices no one witnesses, save for the guy who is screaming at the train, or the one who is suddenly scanning the radio for something more interesting, or the one who suddenly strikes up a conversation, the sudden lack of drive and activity just killing him.
With a resolute mind settled on a long-term destination, I hoped for the best and planned for the worst, using all feedback, every conversation, each interaction as a guidepost for both the destination and pace.
Where would I live? What would I do? Could I afford it? All questions that could be identified and answered, and time would pass anyway. I might not need to know, but just in case I did. Just in case.
Deeply Rooted Motivations
Three years from when I realized that this future was indeed a necessity, I am signing the paper and getting the key.
Time passed anyway. If I had started the process today, I would still be months away, and when the difference between where your mind is and where your reality is may be too great, the emotions can be too deep to handle.
Achieving long-pursued goals is faster and easier with a journal.
Record what you think, how you feel, especially if what you are feeling is powerful. After time, you can answer the all-important question of “Is this a pattern, and if so, is it getting better or worse?” Do not trust your gut or your memory.
Your journal has the facts of the answer. Your memory has the impressions of the answer, and your impressions aren’t to be trusted. The human brain remembers experiences according to your emotional experience of it, with a heavy preference to negative things over positive things.
You remember pain without consciously needing to attend to that memory, while joy requires you to intentionally reflect on the details of it. Use your journal as your voice of reason when you are denying that you need to do anything.
Your brain wants to conserve energy, and staying where you are doing nothing is what it wants you to do. To this end, it will try to trick you. It will dizzy you with nonsense action. It will eliminate unpleasant memories – the dull mundane things that eat away slowly but surely at your happiness. Write stuff down so that you can master your brain instead of being a slave to it.
These journals will contain questions that require investigation, reflection, and more. Discover them, with intention, the intention of pen and paper.
Intentionally Driven Actions
Get the itch, scratch the question. These red flags point out where you need more information. Information can be both free and invisible, though the latter takes care and concern to achieve, in my experience.
Does your internet search history matter? Mine didn’t. I know that’s not a freedom everyone enjoys, the internet isn’t even a freedom everyone enjoys. It does contain information, and no matter where you get it, you have to learn how to sort it into good and bad.
For you might be tricked, like I was by my financial advisor, with answers that are incorrect or incomplete. Shift toward sources that are unbiased and trustworthy.
For me, that meant staying away from people who gave me answers based on what they would do, and people who gave me answers based on what I should do. The difference is recognizing that I am not you.
No one is you. Adapt all intentions to your own, and follow the appropriate action from there. When you just do what you think you are supposed to do, you might miss the reason why they do it, and look like a fool.
At least, always ask why in a challenge to anyone who tells you what you should do. You might just be amazed at what you learn.
Be prepared to hear more stammers and sputters for answers. “That’s what they do,” they say, and can’t bring themselves to say the truth, “I don’t know.”
If they can’t tell the truth, why are you taking advice from them?
Perfectly Imagined Futures
Achieving long-pursued goals usually requires ignoring the well-beaten path and following one of your own. Wear appropriate footwear.
I’ve left many a job in a effort to run from as opposed to run toward. Out of the frying pan and into the fire when you don’t learn from experience, when you make the same decisions the same way with the same brain you had last time. It’s sheer insanity, and wouldn’t you laugh if I told you that indeed, I did end up in the loony bin. At least it finally gave me time and space to reflect.
I’ve learned to be grateful to the time and space to reflect. I’d even call it a luxury that too many people can’t afford, yet it should be a basic right of the human experience.
Can you imagine if every human had the time? Well, we all do, but we don’t take it and wouldn’t respect it if we had it. We’d see it as more time to sleep, eat, screw or be productive.
With my inability to get life to move as fast as I wanted it to, I used the time and space to reflect precisely and accurately on this new future that was unavoidable. How to steer the inevitable toward a destination on the horizon that would make me hopeful at first, and would grow into a keen excitement?
For there’s not just the moment of change, there’s the road after it. There’s not just the wedding, but the marriage. There’s not just the move, but the life lived within that new house.
Excitedly, I will get to make design choices and stage the place, if I never live in it. Alternately, I could live in it as long as I look for the next project to arrive. Either way, I get to play with color, fabric, light, texture, and form with no distractions.
An Exciting Adventure
I can finally both fund and execute my interior designer career dreams, if only at home. At least at home. All for me, as I no longer need to win anyone over, impress, or satisfy anyone.
I am re-entering the real estate market, with dreams that I found a bargain with only cosmetic and stylistic changes to be made. An easy flip, if you would imagine, yet I might rent it out to a lovely young couple who are saving for their dream home, while they determine what they’d want in it. The only way to know is to live it.
Are you crystal clear, but prepared to adapt? Moving with the ebb and flow is the only way to go.
The only way to know if this is the future I imagined is to cross the threshold, take ownership, and live the dreams I’ve been crafting for years. Either way, it will be an exciting adventure all my own, and I can no longer wait to get busy. Whoohoo!
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