Achieving Your Goals: Are You Prepared for the Journey?

By Susan Knight | Achieving your goals can be transformational, but how do you prepare for what may be a challenging journey to get there?

Written by Susan Knight | Seeking Veritas Columnist | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions

Brian Sankarsingh’s article The Case for Self-Publishing provides a behind the scenes look at what it took for him to become the award-winning poet and author he is today. Beyond valuable details he shared about the publishing process, I was struck by how much this article revealed about the pursuit of goals, the challenges that lie therein, and how to overcome those challenges, with five takeaways in particular standing out.

1. We can pursue goals later in life.

How old is too old to pursue something new? When is it too late to resurrect an old dream? Brian shares that he was encouraged to write his first book when he was 55 years old. It’s exciting to think we can open ourselves up to new goals and experiences in our 50s, 60s, and beyond. Some will point out that certain endeavours benefit from, or perhaps even require, an early start in life for success; professional athletics is an obvious example that comes to mind. While not untrue, there are countless endeavours one might choose to pursue which are not constrained in such a way. In fact, it may well be that advanced age confers an advantage for pursuing certain goals later in life, by providing the individual with transferable skills and valuable experience to draw on.

As for concerns about lagging energy in later years, Brian describes working on his poetry “with a burst of creativity I’d only experienced as a teenager.” Passion and purpose are energizing at any age, sometimes in surprising ways and to a surprising degree.

2. Support from others is a game-changer.

“I’d written poetry all my life but never thought that anyone would ever want to read anything I wrote – except for my loved ones. But they were the ones who emboldened me to put my poetry in a book.” I love that Brian chose to use the word embolden, which the dictionary defines as: to impart boldness or courage, to instill with boldness, courage, or resolution enough to overcome timidity or misgiving. You can almost see the powerful life force flowing energetically from one party to another in that description.

How many people are haunted by unfulfilled dreams or sitting on stores of potential they would love to tap into, yet find themselves unable to take action? Someone coming along to impart boldness and courage can make all the difference. Someone coming along to instill the resolution needed to overcome misgivings can serve as the catalyst for acting on all that potential and bringing those dreams to life.

In other words, if you’re trying to go it alone and find yourself struggling, consider enlisting some support, even if through unconventional or non-traditional channels you might not have considered in the past. Acknowledge if the people within your immediate circle are unable to provide the support you need (which could be the case for a variety of reasons) and rather than letting this become cause for discouragement, be proactive in seeking support elsewhere. And if you have folks around you who care about you, believe in you, and want to see you succeed, count your blessings and allow yourself to be emboldened by their faith in you.

3. It’s natural to have doubts along one’s journey.

You’ve started down the road and you’re making progress. So far, so good. And then the doubts start creeping in. After spending months writing and seeing the undeniable fruit of his labour, Brian still had doubts: “I began to question myself. What type of pipedream was I selling myself?”

It’s natural to have doubts along one’s journey, even when clear progress is being made. That’s precisely the time when you need to keep your eye on the prize and push ahead toward your intended destination. Doubts and other negative feelings may be natural, but we don’t have to submit to them. We can choose to continue executing the steps of whatever plan we’ve committed ourselves to, regardless of the feelings we may be wrestling with. We can counter doubts and all those negative feelings by reminding ourselves of past accomplishments and how far we’ve come already. And when our own self-talk isn’t enough to do the trick, we can draw on the faith others have in us. As Brian says, “my family continued to push me onward, even as my heels sunk into the sand of despair.” Refer to takeaway #2 on how others can embolden us to overcome the challenges we’re facing; this applies whether those challenges are external or exist entirely in our minds.

4. Get clear on the “why” fuelling your goal.

Along with healthy self-talk and the support of those around us, there’s another key ingredient to successfully achieving our goals: clarity about the “why” fuelling those goals. Straightforward as this sounds, identifying your why can be a major task in and of itself. Don’t be surprised if you need to take a bit of time and dig deep to connect with the real reason why something is important to you.

When Brian was asked why he was writing his book, he “reflected on that for a few weeks before coming back with an answer I felt reflected my true intent.” Getting tuned-in to your true intent, and remaining tuned-in to it, is critical. Doing so enables you to remain focused, clear-minded, and committed to your goal throughout your journey, in spite of the ups and downs you encounter along the way.

5. Take time to celebrate your achievements.

You can’t help but detect Brian’s joy when he announces, “I now had a published book with my name on it in my hand…the experience for me had been euphoric.” That sounds like someone who is consciously taking time to celebrate and savour the moment.

This seems like a fairly natural response, so what stops us from celebrating our achievements? Several things can get in the way. We might start selling ourselves short, telling ourselves that what we’ve accomplished isn’t a big deal and doesn’t warrant celebrating. Maybe we find ourselves falling into the trap of making comparisons to what someone else has achieved, which leads to us minimizing our own achievement. Or perhaps we simply get caught up in the busyness of life, failing to stop long enough to appreciate what we’ve achieved and how much was required to make it happen.

When you stop and take time to celebrate and truly appreciate your achievements, something very special occurs; you recognize the transformation that has taken place within you. It would be a shame to miss or overlook this, as it may be just as significant as achieving your stated goal, if not more so. Brian didn’t miss it: “Ever so slowly, something began shifting in my mind.” How exciting! To have something shift in your mind, causing you to grow and evolve whereby you now think, feel, and behave differently from how you did before. The end result is a new you — and who knows what goal the new you might choose to pursue next?

About the author: Susan Knight | SGP Featured Writer | Contact the author: @ http://skfreelance.com

Susan is a writer, certified health and wellness coach, and author of Living Well: Self-Discovery, Connection and Growth

Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions.2025 ©️