Rupal Y. Patel
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I have a confession to make: pretty much every time I complete a project or achieve a goal or do something that feels big, I am tempted to celebrate. I have always loved the idea of celebrating success and am always eager to let myself in on the celebration-action.
My celebration-temptations have often been something I can buy - a book, a new dress, a massage - and my thinking would go something like: “Every time I read/wear/relive this, I’ll remember how hard I worked to earn it!” But the flaw in this way of celebrating would hit me not too soon after the book hit my doorstep/the dress arrived/the massage was over. It's not that I didn't like the book/dress/massage. And it's not that I didn't enjoy reading/wearing/experiencing it. It’s just that owning or having it never felt like as much of a celebration as those few seconds of buying it. My point here isn’t about buyer’s remorse. It’s about the false emotional weight we give to things, and our own self-serving ideas of what we do – or don’t – “deserve.” I know this is a tricky balance. We don’t want to be misers, and we shouldn’t be cheap with ourselves. But there is a slippery slope we start sliding down when we begin to link achieving and getting. When we start to expect prizes with milestones. When we fill our baskets every time we fill our quotas. (When we start to walk dangerously close to the edge of becoming entitled little you-know-whats, basically…) Now, I’ve always been pretty good about money. I don’t spend extravagantly (unless it’s on good quality produce or coffee… what I ingest literally becomes a part of my body, so I think it’s worth the extra investment) and I am always vaguely aware of my future old-age so don’t want to be debt-laden or dependent. (It all adds up, and we can start from wherever we are and need to protect what we already have.) BUT, there is also a sleeping consumerist in me that I have to keep on a leash because I love pretty things and good design in all its forms. And I have to keep myself from using my success as an excuse to unleash that beast. Because it’s never about the thing, is it? It’s about what the thing symbolizes. (Even Olympic medals aren’t prized for the thing, the medal. The gold in a gold medal is only worth $500-$600 which isn't exactly what athletes spend their lives training for. It’s what the medal symbolizes - ie being the best on that day - that they care about). And because things are used as symbols, we get to choose what they symbolize. We get to choose what things mean to us. This is not a light responsibility. So what do we do? Well, what we started to do over here at Patel-Brown HQ is keep it simple. We treat ourselves most of the time by not being hyper-consumers, but by truly enjoying the little things: takeaway from Nandos, a cheeky mid-week visit to the cinema, drinking Tesco pineapple juice in our best wine glasses – clink! – on the swing seats on our balcony. Because it’s never about the thing. It’s about the emotion and the memory, and being adult enough to know that what we buy doesn’t in any way reflect our worth or ability or success so much as it can showcase our insecurities and need for external validation. This is a bit of a tough-love message because I see so many people squander their wealth in celebration of it (and I am still tempted every now and then to do so too!). But that’s not very adult of us, now is it? So on this late-February morning, let’s start recognizing things for what they are. Let’s try to take joy in the “small” things (because in the end, the small things are often the "big" things really…) And let's remember that the goal isn't really the goal anyway. So instead of celebrating the result, maybe we celebrate the process, celebrate ourselves for sticking with the process, and let that be enough. Let who we are becoming on our way to achievement and success – without any bells or gifts or parades or stuff – be enough.
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Like some of you perhaps, I have a complicated relationship with exercise: I love doing it, but I hate getting started (it really is true for me that the hardest part is showing up). So this year, I set myself a challenge to exercise/move with intention five days a week, and I am pleased to say that I am now into a six-week streak of - you guessed it - exercising five days a week.
So how did I trick myself into doing it? (Because I did have to trick myself, make no mistake about that...) Well, I stopped fighting myself, and decided to make exercise easy. Instead of hyping myself up to go to the gym for epic all-or-nothing two-hour sweat fests, or talking myself down when I inevitably missed the mark, I exercise most days at home using free videos on YouTube, do one run a week, and one chin up session at the gym. That's it. (PS - I can out chinup most of the brawny guys at my gym, so take that!) Am I going to beat any world records this way? Hell no. But that's not the point. The point is that I am doing just enough to stay fit so I can clear my head of all the drama and angst around working out and focus all that mental energy on my two main priorities instead: my work and my family. Or to put it another way, I am taking the heptathlete approach to life: being the best I can be at a chosen few things, and being just good enough at everything else. Because that is what life requires: acknowledged and intentional tradeoffs, not all-or-nothing chest thumping bravado or obsessive obsessions with "balancing" everything perfectly. Because there is no balance. Only choice. And you have to choose what very few precious things will get all of you, and decide that all of the everything else will have to settle for good enough. Reality. Harmony. Sanity. Not so-called balance. Or, as I like to put it: enlightened swagger, instead of just swagger. In these early months of any new year, many of us are often thinking about goals and targets and ambitions for the months ahead. And as someone who got switched on to goal-setting and planning relatively late in life (in my early 30s), I have gained a lot of trial-and-error/trial-and-success experience with accomplishing goals.
In the past few years, I ticked off two of my biggest "bucket list" goals (publishing a best-seller and being invited to give a TED talk), hit a massive business target, and got some high-profile PR coverage, so I have some recent data on what happens when you finally accomplish the thing - or things - you've been wanting to accomplish for a long time. But let's start with what doesn't happen when you accomplish a goal: The heavens don't suddenly open up and rain down good fortune, everything you touch doesn't automatically turn to gold, clients/investors/potential-partners who once rejected you don't come begging on their knees to win you over, your poop doesn't start to smell like roses, all of your health/wealth/relationship problems don't disappear, happiness and fulfilment don't come streaming through your door on a daily basis, you don't achieve overnight stardom/wealth/wisdom/popularity/etc. And - to put it quite simply - everything you built up in your mind about what it would mean to be an author/on the cover of a magazine/on a TED stage/etc doesn't match up with reality. Or to put it even simply-er: your life doesn't change very much at all. So why bother achieving anything? Because here's what does happen: you become better, smarter, stronger. You learn how to push yourself, you dust yourself off after the nineteenth rejection and get back out there, you stay in the game, you learn what you are made of, you learn what you are not made of (and this is okay, essential even, to any success), you learn who your friends are, you realize that the things you thought you wanted might not be the be all end all of your existence, you learn new skills, you encounter and overcome new challenges, you find a way through the deepest and darkest parts of yourself, you learn, you grow, and you learn and you grow some more. And sometimes - only sometimes - the wealth/fame/fortune/popularity/begging from those who previously turned you away/feeling of being on top of the world does come along with your accomplishments. But not always. And it doesn't always stick around. So don't choose your goals based on what you think the outcome will be; choose your goals for what they will make of you to achieve them. Or to put it another way: the goal isn't really the goal. Who you become along the way is. |
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