Baby Steps

[calvinl]

I approached this week with my newly adopted philosophy of taking baby steps towards my ultimate goal. By that I mean that I tried to make the right decision in everything I had an option for, from what to have for lunch or what project I should prioritize at work. It worked extremely well for the first two days, but I find that whenever I make a wrong decision I end up on the slippery slope of being a sloth.

Actually this is more specific to my eating habits and my inability to get motivated to exercise. Unfortunately for me it is easy to indulge in the unhealthy, and also to make excuses for my lifestyle. However the cliche that anything worth having is something you need to work for seems to ring true to me lately. We had a company-wide meeting on Tuesday and my boss was going on about mission statements and core values, and I started to wonder how that would apply to me specifically. What exactly is my purpose in life, and how exactly am I taking the steps to get to that point?

When my boss first started at the company, I resented him because he kept pushing me to write down purposes and accomplishments that I have done, and for some reason I chalked it up to him wasting my time with things that don't matter to me. For awhile I kept thinking, this guy has absolutely no clue how much time and effort I put into the company, and instead of having me come up with accomplishments, just ask the CEO.

I don't want to say that I've lost my identity (at least whatever it is I called my identity) in the past few years of him working there, but I'm starting to see what he's been trying to do all along. Maybe my resentment stemmed from being uncomfortable defining who I am and what I hoped to accomplish in my life. Sometimes we just have to stop and think about why are we doing the things that we do in the grand scheme of things.

To this day I still don't have an answer, but merely a murky idea of what I want to do in my life. For instance, I'm pretty good with using numbers in a practical way, so in that respect I am in the right profession. But my ultimate ambition isn't to become rich or anything like that. All I want to have is happiness, love, and being financially stable enough to buy a house and support a family. Is this goal too achievable? If you asked me this while I was in college, I would retort that achieving that would be extremely difficult. Now that I think about it more and more, maybe I haven't set my bar high enough.

Also I have been thinking about God, or at least the concept of God. I am, by nature, a skeptic. I don't trust people or things very easily, and I don't think I will ever get to the point where I would believe something just because someone told me. But by concept of God, it's an issue of semantics. Maybe there is an outside, undefinable source that is outside of one's control that a human being just has to accept. After all, life isn't necessarily about controlling all aspects of your life; it could just be about how to adapt to what life throws at you.

Then there's the issue of confidence, and the belief in oneself to be able to handle the chaos of life. I use the term "chaos" very loosely, for I don't consider my life to be particularly chaotic. It used to be that I didn't think I could do anything, which is why I never tried new things. I stuck to my comfort zone, and anything outside of my comfort zone I avoided (or rationalized that it was not worth knowing/accomplishing). The fear of failure was paralyzing and kept me from doing things that I could, in retrospect, easily handle.

I'm a little better with those kinds of things now. At least I know my skill set and what I can bring to the table. If I can't bring something to the table, I don't get down on myself about it. I just ask someone else to help me, and if they don't know how to do it, then I ask someone else until someone knows what I'm asking. It all seems simple now, but for some reason I though of myself as the end all be all to all of life's problems.

Comments

[lilswtpea.livejournal.com]

Baby steps sounds like a great idea! Good luck!

My life goals are essentially the same as yours: happiness, love, financial stability. I think they are much harder to achieve than they sound though. They all require maintenance. They are not something that once obtained, you're done and they're forever yours. Or maybe some people are lucky enough. :)

[thenextlife.livejournal.com]

I think the journey to get to that point will be harder than maintaining staying at that point.

Otherwise, the back up plan is to win the lottery :D

[pink-is-glam.livejournal.com]

Reading this post, I'm inspired.

Perhaps that is the problem with LIFE, as we know it. We all want and expect so much that we fail to realize everything takes time. We being myself of course. I think taking 'baby steps' is a wonderful idea. Map it out and start your journey!

GLAM

[thenextlife.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I inspired someone :) Nothing worth having is easy to accomplish