PRODUCTIVITY

After Reaching Your Highest Goal You May Still Have Unanswered Questions

How to get maximum return from the time you have left

It’s a question all of us have to face.

It often comes right after we successfully accomplish a major goal, or when we’ve achieved some degree of success. In fact, that’s when it hits us the hardest — after riding that wave of victory, feeling good about ourselves, and celebrating our accomplishments.

And why not? We deserve it. We worked hard. We put in the time. We did whatever it took to overcome the obstacles and challenges. And now, we can sit back and enjoy the reward.

That might last a few days, a few weeks, maybe even as long as a month. But then, we have to face THE question….

Now What?

What comes next?

Do we go back to work and pursue the next goal on our list? Or do we change directions and go after something entirely different?

When we look at the traditional advice on achieving success — the supposed enlightened path to attaining the things we want out of life — it typically takes the form of a five, seven, or ten-step plan that includes the predictable recommendations of identifying what we want, setting a goal that is time-bound and measurable, and then breaking it down into action steps we can take on a daily basis.

Eventually, if we’re persistent and willing to make the necessary sacrifices, we arrive at the end game — we acquire what we want, achieve a higher level of success, or create personal notoriety and recognition.

A lot of people use this model.

Especially those who are just starting out, who don’t have a lot of life experience, or aren’t sure what it takes to accomplish an important life goal.

But what about those who have been in the game for twenty years?

We’ve typically crafted our own personalized success strategy, and while it’s often some combination of the time-proven basics — goal setting, time management, and career and life planning — we’ve tweaked the integration of those strategies to fit our personality, temperament, and work-life balance. We know what works — for us — and we’re not about to change the recipe.

On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But over time, there’s a part of us that begins to realize that following the same set of success modalities — over and over again — is always going to bring us back to the beginning, to start over in our pursuit of a new objective, a new goal, the next big thing we want to accomplish or bring into our lives.

At first glance, that may not seem like an overwhelming problem — the obvious answer is to have a long list of new objectives to concentrate on. But what if those new opportunities don’t seem as exciting or compelling as they used to? What if looking at the next goal on your list makes you wonder why you put it on the list in the first place?

That’s when many of us realize it’s more than just the goal we’re after.

Maybe your list included the acquisition of a new car, or a new home, or an increase in income. Yes, those are great options, and they can certainly make our lives more comfortable. But after acquiring those things, we often realize the new car will eventually wear out, and the new house becomes a financial liability. And that increase in income? In most cases, our spending patterns rise in an equal amount, so the level of financial security remains about the same.

And that’s when we realize that something’s missing — something we’d hoped would be more satisfying in the long-term.

Here’s the point — and it comes in the form of a question.

What do you do when the tools and techniques — and the options and choices — you’ve relied on to build your life to this point no longer create the level of satisfaction and happiness you’d hoped to find? What happens when the accomplishment, the acquisition, the achievement of what you thought you wanted, no longer satisfies you?

Even worse, when you extrapolate the process into the future, it’s easy to see the constant repetition of wanting more, getting more, then raising the bar, is a never-ending cycle that continues to leave you frustrated and disappointed.

The irony is that we already know this.

We learned it as kids: The electric train set we just had to have at age eight gets replaced by a new bike at age ten. Then at sixteen, we have to have a car. And at twenty, we’re sure that having our own place will change our life.

And yet, we still push ourselves. We work hard for the prize. We tell ourselves the next big goal or objective will be the thing that finally changes our life for the better, and once we get it, we can relax. Then we can concentrate on things like family, our health, and how we feel about ourselves in a spiritual sense.

But that’s not the way it usually works, is it?

Life’s victories are short-lived.

That doesn’t mean they’re not important. It means we need to appreciate them in perspective to the other important aspects of our lives.

Remember Buzz Aldrin? He had the dream of going to the moon. He dedicated his entire life to it. And even as impossible as that goal was fifty years ago, he did it. He achieved his greatest desire.

And when he came home? Well, you can read the story here or listen to it on this podcast. But in short, after the attention and celebration of his achievement had died down, he realized he wasn’t happy. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do, and yet, the question, “Now what?” began to influence his every waking thought.

As a result, Aldrin experienced severe bouts of depression. He turned to alcohol, and eventually, his wife left him.

That’s how powerful the question, “Now what,” really is.

And yet, even more important, is how you answer it.

Here’s what I’ve learned from taking a hard look at the success of those who’ve pushed themselves to do the near-impossible, to take on very challenging goals, and eventually achieve what they set out to do.

You never arrive — Never.

You finish one race, and then it’s time to start the next one. You may have time to rest, you may not. But you can’t stop. You can’t say, “I’ve made it,” and then sit back and expect the rest of the world to placate you with adoration and hero worship.

Because, regardless of how impressive or significant the accomplishment, it doesn’t last. There’s always another person who has even greater dreams, more challenging goals, and when they push themselves far enough to grab the gold ring, you become another tiny blip on the screen of history.

And that can make the question, “Now what?” extremely difficult to answer.

Wayne Dyer often said that we need to start arriving and stop striving — his way of telling us to live in the moment, to appreciate the people, places, and things that make up our life in the here-and-now.

But I know that doesn’t work for everyone. There are too many of us who need a plan for the future. We need new opportunities to push us forward, we need new objectives to keep us motivated and excited about life.

It’s what gives us that sense of possibility, of potentially making a difference. And as we make headway, we establish benchmarks — a time to look back and realize we’re better, more experienced, more capable than we were when we started our quest for a better life.

This creates what may seem like a huge conflict — a contradiction– in that while we need new goals to make our life meaningful, we inherently know the process and attainment of those goals doesn’t come with a permanent sense of satisfaction. It’s like riding a train on a circular track — there’s no ultimate destination. The process is never-ending, and achieving one goal simply brings us to the next one, and then the next one, and so on.

So how do we identify the next step on the ladder?

How do we prioritize the next objective — especially after accomplishing a major goal that had previously occupied our attention and resources for a significant part of our life?

First, we know that the advice to be found in self-help books has limited value — especially for those of us who have chalked up a decade or two of life experience. We’re not neophytes. We’ve been through the process. We know our talents, abilities, and weaknesses, and we’ve developed the flexibility to try different approaches to arriving at our desired level of success.

So all those books and articles dedicated to identifying your passion, reducing it to tangible goals, and setting a plan to accomplish it, is the equivalent of trying to solve a graduate-level engineering problem with a third-grade curriculum.

We need a different approach — a different way to choose what we pursue next in our life, keeping in mind how it will ultimately affect our future.

The first place to look for new life priorities?

Take a look at all the options you had to set aside — the ones you had to put on hold in order to accomplish your highest priority goal.

These are the things you had to sacrifice, because at the time, you readily accepted the idea that you couldn’t do it all, you couldn’t be everywhere, for everyone. So you told yourself you’d pay attention to those things later, after accomplishing that one thing you had to do — that one thing that wouldn’t leave you alone until you’d finally achieved it.

Why start with such obvious options?

The fact that you chose not to pursue those things, and yet, you realize there’s something still missing from your life, presents the obvious and logical premise that the very thing you’ve been ignoring could be exactly what you need.

For example, what about the spiritual aspects of your life? I mention it because it’s typically the first thing that’s moved to the discretionary side of the ledger — it’s the thing we most likely put on hold while dedicating our time and resources to a goal we thought to be more important.

And then there’s our health. We often make our climb to success without any regard to taking care of our bodies. We eat garbage, we drink too much, and we forgo exercise because we tell ourselves we don’t have the time. And now, those years of abuse are catching up, becoming obvious.

Regardless of how old you are, it’s time to do something about it, especially if you want to be in the best condition possible to take on life’s next challenge.

And finally, there’s our relationship with others — especially the one we have with our spouse or partner. Has he or she been neglected out of necessity, because of all those times you had to stay late at the office, or the dozens of business trips you took without them? And what about all those evenings spent at home, when you could have been enjoying each other’s company? But instead, you spent hours on the phone with business colleagues and customers.

Sure, your spouse has been the brave little soldier. He or she knows you were working to achieve success for both of you. But now that you’ve accomplished some measure of that success, why not include them in the process of enjoying the reward by giving them the time you couldn’t give them in the past.

And what about the kids? How many ball games did you miss? How many times did your youngest ask you to help her with her homework and you told her you were too busy? Or the time when your eldest son asked you for advice on how to handle an argument he’d had with his girlfriend, and you put him off, telling him you were too involved with work to spend the fifteen or twenty minutes he was asking for?

Frankly — and I want to be honest about this — it might be too late. But that’s even more reason to try and restore the relationships with those who mean the most to you.

I know that’s only three options to consider.

But for most of us, especially as we get older, we often realize they can be the most important aspects of living a satisfying life.

Yes, the money, the prestige, and the recognition are compelling, and when we finally achieve an important objective, it’s exciting. But just like all the other bright, shiny things in life, they can divert us away from the things that are ultimately more important — the same things we often take for granted.

So give yourself another chance to review the basics, to make a new set of choices.

And this time, you can make those decisions from the perspective of someone who’s traveled a fair distance down the road. You know the cost of taking each and every step, and you’re no longer willing to compromise your long-term happiness for the occasional short-lived excitement that comes from carving another notch in the handle of a superficial life.

I’ll leave you with this

Regardless of your age, make sure you get the maximum return from the time you have left.

There are too many people who leave this life with plenty of money in the bank, and a mind full of regrets — because they realized, too late, that their hefty bank balance came with a price that was far more than they should have paid.

© 2021 Roger A. Reid. All Rights Reserved.

Roger A. Reid is the author of Better Mondays and Speak Up.

Roger A. Reid, Ph.D. is the host of Success Point 360 Podcast and author of Better Mondays and Speak Up. A certified NLP trainer with degrees in engineering and business, Roger offers tips and strategies for achieving higher levels of career success and personal fulfillment in the real world.