What theme would you set for yourself?
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Editor’s note: There is no end to the path to success. This sentence sounds very positive, and it will motivate us not to rest on the status quo, but to continuously pursue higher goals and achievements. But this is often at the cost of your anxiety and anxiety, because there are higher and farther goals, so even if you complete the goals you have set up before, you have not achieved much sense of achievement and satisfaction. How to overcome this “reach fallacy”? Set a key word for yourself every year. A seemingly simple method can let you focus on the present, focus on your own efforts, and fight off your uneasiness and anxiety about the future. The original text is from Medium, author Niklas Göke, and the original title is “Set a One-Word Theme for 2020”.
You are an ambitious and ambitious person. You set goals for yourself and do your best to achieve those goals. You will never flinch, you will strive to get what you want. But you often have this kind of encounter: I do n’t know what is going on. Although you have achieved so much, you still feel uneasy. The milestone achievements that should have brought you satisfaction don’t actually give you that feeling, and you are still anxious and worried that what you are doing now is not enough. In fact, you can put away these uneasy emotions, you are not psychologically abnormal, and you don’t want to make yourself so depressed, all because you have adopted the wrong weighing mechanism.
Tal Ben-Shahar, Professor of Positive and Leadership Psychology at Harvard University, proposes the concept of “the fallacy of arrival” in Happier, which means “thinking of reaching a future destination Will give you lasting happiness. ” Ideas such as “If I can make $ 10,000 more a year, I’m satisfied” are the so-called “the fallacy of arrival.” Because when you really reach this goal, your true feelings are not as satisfying or lasting as you thought. What will you do next? You set a new higher goal for yourself, and then you are busy again with this new goal.
In other words, if you consider contentment or achievement as a by-product of achieving your goals, then most of the time you will experience dissatisfaction or insufficient achievement. But one way to change this is to set a theme for yourself.
This theme is the ideal baseline to guide your actions and decisions. It has nothing to do with future expectations, nor is it tied to the past. After setting the theme, what you value is what you do now. With the themeAfter that, your measurement of happiness is no longer based on future achievements, but on a daily, achievable standard based on your behavior.
For the past five years, I have set a word-length theme for myself every year:
In 2015, the theme was “input.” I devoted myself to the idea of becoming a writer. I spent a lot of time practicing on public platforms, although I didn’t make much money from it.
In 2016, the theme was “investment.” It took me 2,000 hours to create a website that started to pay me a full-time job after two years.
In 2017, my theme was “growth.” While continuing to develop my existing projects, I have also tried many new things to make myself a better writer, entrepreneur, and individual.
In 2018, the theme is “leverage.” I doubled down on those things that worked, and my income grew.
In 2019, the theme I set for myself is “focus”. Because I know that as I grow to maturity on the road to entrepreneurship, I need to learn to let go of seemingly good opportunities to maintain my expertise in a particular field. Therefore, whenever I receive an invitation, I first ask myself: “Does this increase my concentration or weaken my concentration?” If the answer is weakened, I will refuse.
The beauty of setting a theme like this is that it allows you to weigh all your thoughts, actions, and decisions with a simple, universal standard. All these times, you just need to ask yourself a simple question: “Does this agree with the theme I set?” For example, if the annual theme you set for yourself is “learning”, it is rigid and stubborn You will remind yourself in time. You may have been dismissive of the idea of hiring a business coach before, but one day, you happen to have the opportunity to chat with a business coach. At this time, your theme can get you past your prejudice and ask yourself “What can I learn here?”
You don’t need to pursue perfection when setting the theme. You can think of the theme as a kind of meditation on your own life track. If you get lost for a while, you don’t have to blame yourself, just try to get yourself back on track.
Share one of my getting started tips: You can choose words that can be used both as verbs and as nouns, such as “focus” or “love”. These are often good topics. Of course, you can also choose plain and commonly used verbs, such as “thrive”. Noun thoughAlthough it can also be used as a theme, it often feels a bit abstract.
Also, you need to make sure the subject matter is positive. For example, you should not use “sacrifice” as the subject, but instead use “help” or “love”. Although your behaviors are similar under the different word themes, the feelings that result from them are quite different. It feels bad to think that you have sacrificed three days to host a meeting, but if you want to help those attendees during these three days, it will feel completely different.
I usually like to find various ways to remind myself of the existence of this theme, such as setting a simple theme wallpaper for mobile phones and computers, so that I can see it from time to time and keep it in mind Mind.
In 2020, the keyword I set for myself was “balance”. After hard work in the past few years, I now want to free up more time to maintain interpersonal relationships, improve personal health, and allow myself to enjoy more free time. In addition, I also hope that I can find a balanced state in the career development process, which can gradually adjust the rhythm of work and life to achieve sustainable development.
What theme would you set for yourself? No matter what keyword you choose, always remind yourself to think and reflect on this theme every day, and then you will see your changes.
Translator: aiko