A Goal Only Interrupted By Death
Mark Brown
June 28, 2022
Long term goals can only be achieved by accomplishing numerous short term goals along the way. That requires working every day to get the the latter done to get to the next one. The real key to achieving the long term goals is to maintain past short term goals while going after new ones. It’s never wise for one to assume just because a goal was completed that it will stay that way. This means that improving every day is necessary. Discipline is what a person develops to make sure that happens. I have spent the last 10 weeks getting to the heart of what discipline is, what causes it to breakdown, and ways one can repair damage done to it over time because there’s one central truth to all of this: Discipline is a goal only interrupted by death. It’s the ultimate long term goal. I will explain why in this grand finale.
Long term goals are just like everything in life that choices are involved in. They have both positive and negative effects. They provide a general direction for all of the short term goals so they don’t get lost amidst the confusion of daily life. It’s very easy to make a goal with something specific in mind then make decisions that don’t help it in a meaningful way. I’ve referenced my early 2022 goal of increasing my deadlift only to end up programming more squat development numerous times already. I know it might get annoying to keep hearing about it but it really is one of the best personal examples I have of this happening. It’s a surprise that didn’t have any negative consequences in the moment only because I didn’t have a competition in March or April. It sounds like a smaller mistake than it actually is. If this kind of mistake happens to someone who runs a small business, survival could be threatened. It could also end up being a happy accident, as Bob Ross would say. Uncertainty stemming from procedural mistakes definitely forces someone to evaluate on the fly and learn to multitask.
A goal is much easier to pull off when the vision for it is clear from the start. It can make setting short term goals easier like what I just stated above. However, the net effect of a clear vision is seeing the growth process more thoroughly and understanding how to learn more effectively. That is felt more in programming and daily work than anything else. The process builds on itself like compound interest. A strength training program is a great example of this but it is hardly the only one. Anyone who wants to become better their craft needs to challenge themselves in stages to actually learn along the way. It doesn’t help to go right for the most difficult part of the process if one can’t learn quickly from what they are seeing. Burnout is a high probability for someone who isn’t all in with their soul. This process can be agonizingly slow but that lower speed is what will actually make later stage complexities easier to interpret. Decisions can be made faster and with better focus on how they will help the next few steps. Instinct is grown in this way and is the final stage to learning a craft. A sign of it is when someone has difficulty teaching a concept that they have fully learned without having to break down all of the processes involved for the learner.
One possible negative related to long term goals is emotional attachment. When someone goes all in with their soul on something, the highs will be very high and the lows will be very low. The latter will be either traumatic or very close to it. This can be a challenge to deal with on a daily basis because of the ways emotions effect decision making, especially when life’s other factors get thrown in there as well. I’ve described goals as being the thing that everything else we do is a slave to before. It’s important to this conversation because of the way goals compete with each other, even within one person. A lot of long term goals involve a level saving money over time consistently because a lot of them require a large monetary up front cost just to get feet in the door. Houses, vehicles, small businesses, equipment for home based small businesses, large scale equipment for larger businesses, etc are just a small portion of what I am referring to. This helps if someone needs to pivot off of a stated goal onto a different one. Pivoting to new goals without becoming emotionally traumatized is a tough task for anyone. Professional athletes talk about it quite a bit. Members of the mass media speculate on how professional athletes will handle the transition from retirement to normal life a lot. I just watched JJ Redick refer to retirement as a “second death” in his podcast with Stephen A. Smith. That might seem dramatic to someone as emotionally balanced as I am most of the time, but it’s perfectly in line with the level of emotional investment that discipline demands.
Through discipline, daily improvement is emphasized over everything else. The thoughts that are based around the tomorrow’s goals are nice but distracting, so they need to be washed from the mind. Consistency is the the most important concept to understand where discipline is concerned. It helps one maintain the momentum from yesterday’s work towards the greater goals through getting mentally, physically and intellectually better than they were last time, as Greg Doucette would say, and forces them to work under a greater load. Progressive overload isn’t just a term that is applicable to lifting. It’s how people get better in general. Breaking down complex movements or projects into their individual parts and using every day to improve at them is how someone is going to actually put significant progress together. That’s where learning how to learn from both experience and secondary sources comes into daily improvement. One has to pay attention to the world around them. Just doing something day after day isn’t enough. One has to actually take something from what they are doing one day and be able to apply it on command the next. Any long term goal is going to be dependent on consistent effort focused on daily improvement.
A focus on daily improvement has an effect than can’t really be planned for. Luck is something needs to be accounted for. Fortune plays a large role in everybody’s life in ways no one even comprehends. One of the phrases that sticks out from my reading of Napoleon Bonaparte is “managing luck.” It’s conceptually stupid but the man who said it is someone I regard as one of the most competent humans to ever exist so there has to be something to it. If one is focused on daily improvement, dealing with the bounces becomes an easier task. A small part of this is because one is getting better every day. A bigger part of it will come from opportunities that fall into one’s lap that they had no hand in. There’s more than enough success stories out there centering around people with divergent paths aligning to create something special. Sometimes this is business, others it’s personal. Improving daily requires one to keep their eyes open to see all the opportunities they have. One might go after something specific daily but find they like a particular part it more than others and pivot towards a goal that centers on that. If one isn’t working daily to improve, they never see it. One can help improve both their luck and how they handle it so when bigger, more lucrative goals become actually attainable, their increased competency aids faster growth. The same applies for when the larger goals have been achieved. Competition is fierce. Diligent daily improvement helps identify competitors and strategies to defeat them. This makes being consistent in effort crucial to survival of one’s goal.
Consistency isn’t exactly easy to successfully find when goals aren’t lurking somewhere. This can come from a lot of different sources. Most of them come from the beginning or end stages. People whose dreams have been defeated can be acutely effected, especially if their emotional attachment to it is great enough. Pivoting from from one goal to another can be traumatic, as seen from Reddick’s quote. It can create a rudderless boat effect, so to speak. Moving without a stated goal is difficult for those who are goal driven. Discipline functions as a goal in the absence of stated short or long term goals. The goal of daily improvement is enough to sate the mind in these cases so that interest can spark when one opens their eyes to the possibilities that lay before them. By maintaining that drive and momentum forward, one can accelerate the success of a goal they found faster than if they gained interest in it out of the blue. Sometimes one has become a slave a goal in order to do it. They do that by emotionally suppressing some needs while propping up others.
Daily improvement is a bit of a wandering target. It’s might not be the same every day. As we age, daily improvement changes in relation to what can be improved day-to-day. The peak of physical improvement tends to be from 25-40 years of age. From this perspective, the improvement one can make physically lowers, something drastically. Medical science is doing its best change that but the physical effects of aging are impossible to stop. Our ability to improve mentally and intellectually doesn’t peak unless there is a physical impairment that hinders it like a brain or nervous system injury of some kind. Between the 3, there are ways for daily improvement that shouldn’t be ignored. Some days there will be more of than others. That’s the way it is when we are any age. `Discipline is the force behind daily improvement and can be around our entire lives. It might not sound grand but is nothing short of the longest term that can be made. It is a goal only interrupted by death.
All goals require disciple to get accomplished. There is a lot less luck involved in getting the long term varieties done. It plays a substantial role in short term goals because of the way unrelated events effect the bigger picture. Doing the work that needs to be done every day helps minimize back luck and maximizes the potential of good luck. One can dream big but it is the daily work that actually creates the opportunities that make up the short term goals. No long term plan can be achieved without the first accomplishing those goals. They create positive energy from which someone can create forward momentum towards larger goals. Being able to take the fortunes of daily life in stride while managing to proceed towards stated goals is a challenge for anyone. The costs of staying on task can be quite high. They are varied and effect multiple people in one’s life. Constant movement forward isn’t necessary or even possible but not taking steps backwards is. One does that by putting in the work every day to improve. That consistency will pay off at some point. One just has to keep their eyes open to world around them and learn from it.
Life Through Lifting 