LIFE
Getting to Your Goals One Step at a Time
Sometimes when we are shooting for some big goals, we get tunnel-visioned and miss opportunities right in front of us.
A couple of years ago, I returned to school for postgraduate studies after nearly 20 years of not being a fulltime student. A lot had changed since I was last in a classroom but walking around campus and experiencing the life of a student in a new era fueled by technology was invigorating. I was inspired by the younger students that I shared the campus with, and some of my older colleagues who were facing even more drastic life changes than I was.
My goal was to successfully complete my academic programme while taking in as much as I could of the millennial student experience in a new country. And believe me, it took some adjustment but I succeeded. But that’s not the point of this post.
This post is about a seemingly mundane incident that taught me a life lesson.
I was on my school campus one day, heading to the ATM when I tripped and had a great fall. It was one of those falls that had to be succumbed to for minimal damage to the body. There was no dignified way to save myself, so I just allowed my body to go as the physics of the situation dictated. My bag and my phone went flying ahead of me before my body hit the ground. When the fall was over, I picked myself and my belongings up, and as I nursed my bruised palms and assessed the cause of the fall, I got a life lesson out of it.
I was heading to the ATM and my mind and eyes were so focused on the ATM that I failed to see an obstruction right in front of me. Sometimes we are so focused on a particular goal that we fail to see what is immediately before us, whether it is an opportunity to take advantage of or a stumbling block that threatens the attainment of the goal.
It is important that while we keep our eyes on “the prize” and work towards it, we stay aware of what is directly in front of us so that we can make adjustments, where necessary, or change our course of action.
We get to our goals by successfully taking the next right step, and then the next, and the next after that.
