You're Successful, Now What?
Clean your room
The goals you had on your vision board have been reached. The years of obsession, sacrifice, and persistence have paid off. You not only reached your goals, but you’ve also exceeded them. And just like that, the one thing that drove you while giving you purpose has been taken away from you for all the right reasons. Now what?
How do you fill the void that is left by achieving your goals? Being content doesn’t happen overnight, you can’t be obsessive about reaching a goal today and then sail off and live a relaxing life on the beach tomorrow. You’ve rewired your brain to be ambitious and live off the adrenaline of success while being cheered on with every milestone.
With the achievement of success comes a loss of identity, the same identity that made you successful in the first place. What you’re left with is beginning to face the things that success distracted you from. Having the ability to hyper-focus on one area of your life, at the expense of every other area of your life, is no longer an option.
Kids avoid cleaning their room by promising to clean after they have one more snack, watch one more show, or finish that task that is more important. But eventually, the clothes and toys don’t pick themselves up, and they have to do the work to clean their room. We carry that same level of distraction into adulthood, we avoid doing the hard interpersonal work until we finish getting other parts of our lives in order. Eventually, we achieve the achievements that served as distractions, and now we are left picking up the pieces that we let fall.
Reaching your goals is an amazing feeling. Having the ambition to better yourself and your family is commendable. Yet, a time will come when you reach your goals and achieve the success that comes with them. When this happens, you will have to fill the void that is left by either chasing more material success or achieving contentment with all you have.
