What is the point of it all?

What is the point of it all?  

Giving your life goal-oriented direction.

Do you have your own personal life-goals that aren’t related to what magazines tell you, you need or what your friends think are important? Does anything stop you achieving these or, worse, do you not even know what they are?

Recently my best friend (who also happens to be the greatest personal trainer in the world!) made a passing comment in the gym which no one has ever said to me in my 29 years of life before and as such had a profound effect on me. It wasn’t particularly long and maybe not even that insightful to anyone except me, but it changed the way I look at things. He simply asked: “yes, but what is her goal?”

To put this in context we were talking about a slightly rotund, older, lady that regularly uses the gym we use and performs some sort of aerobics/dance steps/Zumba on her own in front of the mirrors in the stretching area. She does this on a weekly basis and doesn’t seem to use the gym for anything else; steadily over time of seeing her on a weekly basis she has become more round and more wobbly.

So what is her goal in coming to the gym? If it is to dance around and have what looks like a fun time then she is achieving that. However, I could probably think of more pleasurable ways of doing this – like in a class of like-minded people or at home in front of a dance fitness DVD if you are more of a solitary creature.  

On the other hand, if her goal of coming to the gym is to lose weight, get fitter or gain muscle she is failing miserably. I can only conjecture on her goals as I haven’t mastered the courage to ask her yet but I wonder if she knows what her goal even is or if she is just mindlessly prescribing to the belief that just by going to the gym makes you healthier; doing the same thing she always does and the only thing she knows on the hopes that she will achieve something, anything, who knows what.

But beyond picking on poor unsuspecting people at the gym to amuse myself this made me look at the world around me and address my own goals and if my actions were working towards achieving these. Am I just blindly plodding on a course set for myself a long time ago? In thinking about this I like to take the inquisitive child approach and ask ‘why, why, yes but why?’ At university I met many people that had come from different backgrounds to me and were certainly working towards very different ambitions, and despite all being highly intelligent people when asked why they were studying medicine many of them had no feasible answer. Of course we all had the stock interview answer ‘to help people’ but few of them could or would give an answer that gave a clearer perception of them as a person.

Indeed there was quite a high attrition rate over the six years I was there and I often wondered if these were the people when asked why they wanted to be a doctor (if they really thought about it) would reply with things like ‘because my parents wanted me to’, ‘ because I was clever at college and didn’t really know what else to do’ or maybe ‘because I thought medicine would be a good way to get lots of money without working too hard’. Wrong on that last account! Whilst I sometimes don’t agree with my sister’s life ethos when talking to me about her career aspirations now she has graduated as a lawyer she tells me that she likes criminal law but there is no money in it so she would rather do something slightly more boring but with greater financial reward. At least she is honest and at least she had goals!

I digress.

In trying to address my life objectives I got quite flummoxed and felt overwhelmed by it all, it’s a massive topic, so decided to break my life down into the main components I felt were important to me. These will likely be very different for other people but for me the main things that matter are my friends and family, my fitness and martial arts, my career and then, widely grouped together, all other hedonistic pursuits such as painting and writing (thus this blog!). I’m sure there are other things I could have included but these would probably be more relevant to what I feel I should think is important rather than what I actually think is. 

For example I don’t care how big the engine on my car is, how many pairs of Manolo Blahnik’s I have, how young I was when I got a promotion, how much my last pay cheque was (as long as it could pay the bills!) or how many vodkas I managed to sink last time I was at the pub.

My goals with relation to my friends and family are to always ensure that they know how much I love them and be there if they should ever need me. I achieve this by telling them all the time and by staying in regular contact with them, whether this is over coffee or a text or a call. I also want them to know that they are my priority in life and I think I show this in loving and caring actions; I generally don’t put something else above them if they need me and I try my hardest to do little, or big, things that I think will make them smile.  I love life and I love them and want the world to know! Well I’ve ticked that box, yay me. Is there anything else I could do better, I’m sure but I am happy in general with this area. 

Are you happy with yours?

My goals in relation to fitness and marital arts are more varied but also more egotistical. I’m not going to lie I want big biceps, toned triceps, ripped abs and lean legs, who doesn’t?! What do I do to achieve this – I do (heavy!) weights three times a week and conditioning three times a week. Am I at my goal yet? No because I have only been doing this for 9 months and because I take a rather lackadaisical approach to my nutrition. No matter how much I want these things I want to enjoy myself more and so won’t pass up on a meal out with my friends or a cheeky afternoon cake and coffee; maybe this is a weakness that I could set a goal to change! Despite wanting these things I also want to do it in a healthy and realistic way, no steroids for me, and if this means slower results then so be it. In terms of my martial arts, I set out wanting to improve my grappling skills and confidence after being choked out in an MMA inter club. I feel happy with my progress in this area after entering some competitions and regularly training, but there is still a fair way to go. Now that I have starting showing progress in this area I want to resume my stand-up fight training to enable me to do an MMA fight and hopefully not get choked again. I am not always exactly on target with these goals and I’m not always awesome at every day of training but I am trying and it gives me a focus so that I am not just numbingly plugging away at the gym with no end in sight. 

What are your fitness goals and aspirations? 

What makes you go to the gym at the end of a long day?

Career, career, career. What can I say about this other than that I view it as a medium to fund my life but refuse to make it the be all and end all of my world. I spent a long time at university training and then spent a few too many years subsisting only to get myself to work, fuel myself at work and then collapse exhausted at the end work. I had no hobbies, I rarely saw my family, I was fat and unmotivated to get fit and I was a mess.  It took a life changing event to make me realise that when I am old and look back on my life (endlessly annoying people with my stories) I want to be able to say I achieved things and I enjoyed myself along the way. My nightmare future self might sit there and say “well I worked really hard and I have lots of money but I didn’t really have time to do anything fun because of all that working.” But I wouldn’t have any friends or family to tell those stories to because I would have made work my priority at the detriment of everything else (and I probably would have died prematurely from too much stress and eating too many canteen chip portions!) So how did I change this and not make work all I did? I applied to work part-time, it took a lot of planning and a lot of paperwork and probably muchly annoyed many admin staff but damn - am I so much happier. And not just happier but I am a better doctor – I go to work and do my job, I smile at the patients and remember tasks I am supposed to do because I haven’t just worked 12 days straight with no breaks and minimal sleep. So in this area I feel I have epically succeeded, and if I think of it in the SMART goal format it is measurable in vast increases in happiness. In terms of my long term work ambitions – well my life may change in the next few years and so I will endeavour to mould my work around this, who knows where it could take me.  

How do you feel about your job? 

Does it make you smile or want to run and hide? 

Is there anything you can change to make it work for you?

Hedonistic pursuits – it is my goal in life to try many new things and do at least one thing every week solely because I enjoy it.  I am of the view that invariably you will only regret the things you didn’t try no the things you did so I am happy to get stuck into anything and accept defeat if it isn’t quite the right thing for me. I have made ‘enjoyment’ one of my main life goal areas because without it what else is there. I have far more interests and do far more new things now than I ever did when I was younger; what changed this? Midway through my university course I needed to get a new job to pay my fees and of course for this job I had to submit a CV. I found this quite easy, I had good skills and could work hard, except when I got to the hobbies and other interests section: it completely stymied me. I had no idea what to put: I liked reading as long as it was only textbooks as I had no time for anything else, I liked watching TV because it was the only thing that allowed me to be brain-dead and not have to concentrate at all, I liked driving if it was all over the county to clinical placements. Then and there I decided that I needed to get a life, I stepped back from my university work and maybe I only ranked in the second quartile not the first and maybe I didn’t get the highest exam grades but I was sane when I graduated. Now I try and stick to my goal of doing something I enjoy as often as I can but at least once a week. I happily enjoy writing and have just been published, I like painting and our walls are full of individual pieces, I make jewellery and beanbags and curtains and I don’t really care if it sounds twee because it makes me happy. 

Do you do anything for yourself? 

Not with anyone else in mind? Something that makes you smile and feel like your sole purpose isn’t being a wife/mother/manager etc.

If this has made you think about where you are in your life and if it’s where you intended then I have also achieved my goal in writing this blog. Not everything goes to plan, I thought I would have a family of my own and be living in America by the time I was 30, and that’s not happening in the next 5 months but that doesn’t mean I haven’t achieved other aspirations. Set yourself some goals, get some direction and treat it as a pleasure to achieve them rather than an arduous slog.

I leave you with this great story I often refer back to when analysing my life and goals:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented a fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the man.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The fisherman explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with all your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs...I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Afterwards? That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. 

"When your business gets really big, you can start selling stock and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?"

"After that -- and this is the best part -- you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, catch a few fish, take a siesta, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends!"