Squeezing the Life Out of Your Goals

Thank you for reading this week’s Operation Melt update.

Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives.

I am trying to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.

Amuse Bouche

My amuse bouche for you today is a light “dad joke” to entertain your mind before we get down to business.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet.

He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath.

This made him, (oh, man, this is so bad its good…)
A Super Calloused Fragile Mystic Hexed By Halitosis.

Like any other amuse bouche, you may have hated it, but it was worth every penny that you paid for it, right?

Goal Success by Choice

We can choose to be successful with our goals if we make the right daily choices, build the right habits and behaviors and adopt the right mindsets. Goal Success by Choice shares lessons about the choices we can make that can either move us closer to our goals or hold us back. I hope this post helps you get a little closer to crushing your goals.

Squeezing the Life Out of Your Goals

Here’s an experiment to try.

Turn your hand palm up, cup it and fill it with water. How much water can you hold in it? Is it hard to keep it from spilling out?

Now, close your hand and try to hold onto the water with all your might. It all comes spilling out, right?

The harder you try to hold onto the water the less you can actually keep in your hand.

This experiment is an analogy for life. If you press too hard, try to hold on too hard, or focus too much on something, you might actually cause the opposite of your intended result. You can accidentally squeeze the life out of your goals.

Imagine being in a job you love and that you are good at; a job you certainly don’t want to lose. You focus every day on how not to lose the job. You hold back and don’t speak up because you don’t want to anger anybody. You don’t share your counter-culture ideas because you don’t want to rock the boat. Suddenly you have just become a “yes” person and you are not contributing anything new to the environment. Do you think you are going to keep the job for long or is it going to be like the water you tried to hold onto too hard?

Similarly, in your personal health and fitness, you set a goal to reduce your resting heart rate by getting healthier. You create a highly regimented plan of daily activities designed to help your health. You track everything. You say “no” to consuming anything that is the slightest bit unhealthy. Then you continually monitor and watch your heart rate using your wearable fitness tracker. Do you think the heart rate will go down? Probably not. You are putting so much extra stress on yourself that will naturally drive your resting heart rate up.

Finally, you decide that you will be happier if everybody likes you. Then you spend every day trying to be a people-pleaser. You try to compliment everybody, no matter if it is genuine or not. You hesitate to share your thoughts, your hobbies and your interests with others. All conversations with people become one-sided, them sharing and you telling them how great they are. But, the result is that you aren’t really liked. People see through the shallow, non-genuine compliments and get bored with the one-sided relationship. The people-pleasing tactic that you adopted to make people like you because you thought you would be happy will fail. You won’t be happy if you never get to be yourself.

In sports, there is a saying that somebody is “playing relaxed.” That is that they are approaching the game in a calm, laid-back manner but still performing well. They aren’t trying to force bad shots or dumb plays that end up harming, not helping their team.

Choosing to play relaxed is one of the keys to achieving your goals while still enjoying the journey.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t work hard, that is still important. But maybe work hard at the things in your control while still doing the things that make you happy. Then don’t fret so much over the results, if you adopt the right behaviors, the results will follow in time. But a maniacal focus on them may actually slow your progress.

When interacting with people, you can speak your mind and voice opposing opinions while still being respectful and appreciating the other person’s point of view. This leads to respectful, spirited debate which is far more interesting to other people than when you are always playing Waylon Smithers to their Mr. Burns.

One of my key strategies for making your dreams come true is to enjoy the journey. There is already too much negativity and stress in the world, why add to it? If you can play relaxed as you pursue your goals instead of trying to squeeze the life out of them, you will reach the finish line faster and with a big smile on your face.

Suggested Resources

Here are some other resources related to today’s post that you might want to read:

Did You Like What You Read?

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