At the end of my thoughtletter from March 4, ‘24, I said that I’d always be grateful for that voice — the voice of my son, Alex Honnold, as he ran with me and distracted me enough so I could forget the pain and miserable discomfort that might otherwise have stopped me from finishing that first 10k race. Which led to the next race, and the next…which all led to my first half-marathon, and then my first marathon….
I didn’t always have that voice to follow. Earlier in my life, before I had kids who were so wise, I had to figure out for myself how to accomplish the things I dreamed about. I’d had many goals, things I’d always wanted to do since I was little — conduct an orchestra, publish a book, teach abroad, see the world and learn languages. Many others. But no one to talk with about them. By the time I was an adult, I lived 3,000 miles away from my family (which was never particularly supportive). From my husband, I got only discouragement, or silence (see The Sharp End of Life for more on that). For four years we lived in Japan, teaching English as a foreign language, and then in a suburb of northern California, which for me (a New Yorker), was just as foreign. Then we divorced, and the next month he died suddenly. I had no support, no friends yet in my new home state, no ‘village’ to help me with anything.
But I had my dreams.
So I figured out how to make them happen. Little by little, baby step by baby step, as I strove toward — and accomplished — one goal after another, I began to realize that whatever I was doing, it worked! And if it works so well for me, it could do the same for others.
So I’d like to share it with you.
If you’re enjoying this, please consider telling your friends about it! I’d really appreciate it…and they might, too!
First, of course, before everything else, your goal must be fully formed. If you can’t state your goal simply, in one short, simple sentence, then maybe it isn’t quite ready to be a goal.
• “I’d love to write a book” is not a goal. It’s impossible to work toward. My mother loved to talk about the book she would write, someday. She talked about it all her life, and that vague longing went to her grave with her. She never figured out how to transform that dream into something concrete that she could work toward. (You can read about that in my memoir, The Sharp End of Life.)
• “By my birthday next September, I will have written 10 chapters of a memoir about having my first baby in Japan, one each month, and will have drafted a pitch letter so I can search for an agent.” This is a clear plan ready to outline and work toward. It’s the same dream as the previous one, but this version is achievable. The other is not. This one has discrete steps you can work toward; the other does not. Re-framing your dream into concrete, accomplishable steps will move you toward it. Dreaming about it will not.
Dreams, or longings, can be equally enticing whether they’re well thought out or just a vague idea — but ‘vague’ doesn’t do it as a goal. As the old saying goes, ‘If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, you won’t get there.’
You can think of a goal as the destination at the end of a long voyage. After all the work you’re going to put in to get there, you want to be sure that you wind up exactly where you want to be. If your ‘travel plans’ are fuzzy, or if the landscape of your final destination is blurry, it will be impossible to work toward it — like trying to catch a train that hasn’t quite pulled in yet, or without knowing which one goes where you want to go.
Once you think you have a solid, bona fide, specific goal to work toward, you must take into account this equally essential caveat: Who are you?
Before you can embark on any adventure, or begin striving toward any goal, you must know with absolute certainty that you have enough of whatever it will take to carry you through all the hurdles that will, inevitably, arise.
Every goal encounters hurdles. Every path to a dream has roadblocks. How will you handle them?
How well do you know yourself?
Do you keep a journal? Have a close friend or family member with whom you discuss everything? See a therapist? Know a clergy-person who helps you find clarity? Before you can accomplish any goal, you need to know who you are, and what drives you.
We don’t come into this life with that knowledge; we have to work for it. And the clearer that understanding is, the easier it will be to achieve your goal.
When I started to dream of creating my own orchestra and conducting it, I had to think through my own psyche, my personality and how it would affect the preparation and creation of an orchestra. Did I know enough about music? (Probably.) Did I know enough about conducting? (I’d watched a lot of conductors all my life, greats and not-so-greats, in NYC in schools, concert halls and parks, and had studied how they did what they did; I’d have to depend on that.) Did I know how to get the word out in the press, to attract musicians in the region? (As an experienced writer, I had that one aced.) Did I know how to find a venue for rehearsals? (As a teacher, I knew most schools had a band room, so I had no doubt that with all my academic contacts, I’d find one we could use one evening per week.)
Without any of those pre-formed skills, a goal like mine would have been unreachable. If you don’t recognize your shortcomings, you can’t fix them, and if you don’t fix them before you begin striving toward your dream, the end result will be only frustration.
But psyche is more important than just knowing how to do things: Was I organized enough and structured enough to make the time for this and to keep on top of such a group? (Everyone who knows me knows that’s a solid ‘Yes.’)
And that brings us to the single, most important question: Did I want it badly enough? If the answer to that is ‘Yes,’ all the rest can be learned.
That’s worth repeating: Whatever it is that you want to accomplish, you have to really, really want it. And that is the only pre-requisite to making your dream a reality.
The rest can be learned.
Now your turn: What do you dream of doing someday?
What do you need to know, in order to accomplish that? Don’t know the answer to that yet? That’s fine. The first step toward any accomplishment is information — learning everything you’ll need to know (it won’t be ‘everything’ at the beginning, but enough to get you started). All the things you’ll need to do in order to move forward, we’ll call those ‘baby steps.’ You can achieve anything by baby steps.
But without the proper structure, or organization, all the baby steps in the world won’t get you where you want to go.
Without that underpinning of logical structure, you’ll just be wandering around the train station, wondering which train might get you to your destination. You can’t get on the right train if you don’t know which one it is or where it’s going.
I’ll go into that structure in my next thoughtletter. But first, try to figure out how well you know yourself and your dream.
Whether it’s specific enough. Clearly thought out.
And whether you really, really want it.
I love the challenge of turning “it would be nice” into “I really, really want this.” Talking ourselves INTO taking the steps to get there instead of talking ourselves out of it. That inner critic needs to be silenced for me. I can’t focus on the negative “what ifs” because WHAT IF they turn out to be positive.
Love your posts!