Why am I not getting my purposes?
If there is one thing that goes hand in hand with the New Year, besides the cotillion and the grapes, it is the purposes for the coming year. As the Christmas season approaches, we begin to look back and assess the year that ends. We think about what has happened in our lives and what we want for the future. Taking stock of the past is an interesting exercise to be able to keep in mind several aspects when planning. But, after taking stock of the past year, we must ask ourselves: Have we really done everything we had planned?
This is the handicap. We should ask ourselves why we have not managed to do what we always promise ourselves. Answering this question may seem disappointing at first, but that will also be our greatest ally in the future. Human beings have an unconscious part with which we fight at the moment of moving to the action and, with the new purposes, as the days go by and we do not fulfill them, we become unmotivated and abandon them.
What should we keep in mind when proposing new purposes?
First of all, it is necessary to bear in mind that everything requires work. It seems obvious, but we don’t always keep it in mind. We live with the culture of immediacy, we want everything quickly and satisfaction is instantaneous. This aspect added to the impact of social networks which sometimes show us only the ideal identity of a person, not the real one. And this idealizes that you can have everything, without knowing the effort behind it, and it can distort reality.
As we said, everything requires work and to be aware, we must delete from our head the mirage that we can effortlessly achieve a transformation. Just because we mention it, it’s not going to happen. The fact of saying that you are going to learn a language does not produce any change. It takes work, effort and putting part of ourselves to achieve the desired goal: go to class, show interest, study, take exams, read in that language, practice with other people, etc. We can have a lot of desire to achieve a purpose, but without work capacity we will not succeed.
The other side of the coin in this matter is the feeling of failure, disappointment, demotivation and excuses: “Why am I going to continue if I don’t make any progress?“. So it is very important to ask yourself: Have I done enough work? Do I really want this change? Am I willing to transform part of myself? Wanting a change means, as its own word says, a transformation. For this it is essential to practice, be constant, question things, rethink, analyze and have patience.
Progress toward purpose is synonymous of effort
As we begin a new journey we must be willing to learn, to tolerate and to be aware that we are imperfect beings and we are learning. At first glance it may seem obvious, but it is a difficult point to assimilate.
At the same time, when we decide to set out towards our goal, everything around us is mobilized, as there is an impact on our relationships. We make changes and, by modifying something in us, it indirectly or directly affects our close circle. It may be that there are those who do not support your decision and, therefore, devalue it, even discourage us. But it is our decision and, in every change there will be people who respect it, encourage us and even join us, but others may not. This is a common consequence of any process. We can kindly explain our motivation, but we can’t please everyone; we must keep it in mind.
Linked to the previous point, the words of other people condition us. But, on many occasions this is an excuse to put an end to the new thing we are doing. What if instead of taking it as something negative, we make it push us?
Since we were children, we build ourselves with words and beliefs that, on many occasions, limit us. But luckily, they can be modified in order to build new meanings that help us. For example, imagine that we have linked the word “cold”, among many others, to shelter and inactivity. We have proposed to train and precisely on the day we have to do it, a very cold storm is expected. Our mind will relate to staying at home and not going to train because it is very cold. But now we have a desire, a purpose and we know that we must work on it, we are going to give this word a different meaning. From now on, the cold days will be a challenge for our constancy.
We set the limits thinking that what we believe is the only truth. Making a change of thought and generating new beliefs that drive us to achieve our purposes is possible if we work to change them.
In short, reviewing what we did in the past from an analytical point of view can help us, but we must remember that we cannot modify anything that happened. The important thing is to know what has made us abandon in previous years and turn it around. The most important thing is what we do in the future. Keep in mind that changes require time, work and can only be achieved by walking.