On Ever-Shifting Goalposts

This week I've been thinking about goalposts and about how we all create these invisible markers of success for ourselves. When a football flies through the hands of a goalkeepers and lands firmly in the goalpost, we go wild. We cheer. We rejoice. And, if the ball lands in the goalpost enough times, we've won and celebrate. Or, in the case of my brother-in-law, who seems to perpetually report to me that his team lost, again, we feel sad; deflated and disappointed* 

*Truth be told, I didn't realise how serious a game football really is to some. It really is no joke, guys. 

Goalposts are such important things; they're not only ways of gauging our success, but also ways of setting ourselves important targets. They keep us moving forward; they drive us to be better; to do better. 

But, they're funny things, too; goalposts. 

They can become so important to us that they become dictators of our self-worth. Every missed shot can feel like a chip in our armour, and slowly, we come to feel as if we will never achieve what we so desperately wish to. Worse still, other people seem to be scoring goal after goal and by comparison we fall continually short. 

And then, then my friends, there is a special type of goalpost: the ever-shifting goalpost. The targets that we set ourselves and achieve. But, instead of celebrating the achievement, we shift the goalpost at the last minute, rendering our achievement worthless. And by association, we come to believe ourselves to be useless, too. It is, after all, very difficult to be truly happy after a success when the goalposts for what success look like keep shifting. 

I have come to realise that I am something of a Queen (you know it!) of shifting the goalposts in my life. No sooner have I achieved something that I told myself I never, ever, not in a million years could, do I dive in with a reason that the achievement actually meant nothing. And on and on this cycle goes, on a loop that is sustained with by comparison and criticism and garnished with a huge sprinkle of imposter syndrome.

And so, this week as I started to feel the seasons shifting; the hazy summer evenings giving way to a slight chill; I couldn't help but wonder what life would be like if the goalposts that I set myself didn't change quite so frequently. If I paused; I mean really paused, every once in a while to take stock of my achievements. And what if I allowed myself to feel proud of something without instantly discrediting it? What would that be like? What if I gave myself the space to be disappointed and to sit with that feeling; knowing that it is an inevitable part of being human? What would that be like?

As human beings we are incredibly resilient and this is simultaneously both a miraculous and terrible thing. We are capable of surviving great hardship, but our inherent resilience also means that we can survive our own self-destructive patterns for longer than we really need to. We can somehow survive telling ourselves that we are no good; that we are useless and destined to fail and that success is reserved for other people; the ones who really deserve it. But the thing is, just because we can survive it, doesn't mean that it's any way to live.

Because the truth is that we are already worthy. We are already beautiful and brilliant. And our successes, however big or small, are worth celebrating. The fact that we get up every day and do it all again is no small thing. That's worth celebrating. The fact that we can try to do something, fail and try again, in spite of how much it hurts; that's magical. The good, the bad, the ugly, the disappointing, the heart-wrenching. It's all necessary. Because all of those moments come together to make a life well-lived. Perfection exists only in the ideal of our minds eye. And truthfully, I have come to believe that a life spent chasing it is a life only half lived. There is so much joy to be found in the journey; so much happiness to be found in the most unexpected of places. And crucially, disappointment and failure is not always an absolutely bad outcome; there are so many important lessons to be learned in these moments. 

So, here's to setting ourself goals but not shifting the goalposts if and when we achieve them. Here's to pausing to take stock of the things that went right and the things that went wrong and to knowing that we need both; however hard it can be to swallow the latter. 

Here's to remembering that our worth is not measured by the number of goals that we score. Now read that again. 

With all of my love, always,

Caitie xxx