Quit Being So Quick to Move The Goal Posts
The Bar is Loaded, Pt. 5: How a lack of appreciation for our progress is killing our joy.
It’s a Saturday afternoon at Crunch Fitness, and all the typical busy gym sounds fill the air: weights clanging, upbeat pop music in the background, the chatter of all the groups of friends there together. Meanwhile, I’m not listening to any of it. I’ve got my headphones in, volume cranked up, and I’m ready to hit a bench PR. I’d been chasing this one for awhile; to be able to bench a plate, as they say (gym lingo for 135 pounds: the bar itself at 45 pounds, and a 45 pound plate on each side), would be pretty cool for me as a woman in my early 20s. My fiance and his friends circle up around the bench, one recording the lift, and all cheering for me. As I unrack the weight, it feels heavy. Of course it would. I’ve never touched this weight before. Still hopeful I can make it, I lower the bar to my chest and begin to press back up. It’s a GRIND, lemme tell ya, but finally my elbows lock out, I throw the bar back on to the rack, and jump up. I’d finally hit a milestone I’d been dreaming about for months.
Hitting milestones, achieving goals, those are some pretty cool moments. Maybe it’s making it in to a certain school, getting a certain grade, or receiving a certain promotion. Think back to the last time you had a moment like this: how did you feel? But, unfortunately, our excitement doesn’t usually last for long. It seems like a universal human trend to aim for a goalpost, and then as soon as we make it, almost immediately move the goalpost and no longer appreciate what we’ve just accomplished. My time powerlifting has seen this goalpost-moving happen many, many times.
Not long after I benched a whole plate for the first time, I started setting my sights on the next big number: 150 pounds. The next time I aimed for a PR, I planned to hit 145, and my hope was that it would be easy enough I could try for 150 next. Yet, 145 turned out to be about as hard as it could be without failing it. Here I was, a few months after I was so excited about 135, now disappointed that I could “only bench 145?” How quickly I forgot how long I’d waited for that 135 milestone, only to throw it to the wayside as I became greedy for more.
As much as we hate to admit it, greed is a primary culprit for our hasty goalpost-moving habits. Our fallen nature has a really hard time simply appreciating what we have without always yearning for more. It’s everywhere in our lives, not just with achievements: how often do you have a little voice inside that says “you’d be happier if you ate just one more cookie, stayed up just another half hour scrolling, bought just one more new pair of jeans"? We tend towards over-consumption, so we must counteract with contentment. How on earth do we do this? Let’s look at a few ways to override our default settings.
1) Acknowledge our lack of contentment.
Like they always say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. In order to become more content with where we’re at in life and not always be looking to what’s next, we must first take stock of where we sit with contentment. Do you always jump to the next achievement as soon as you’ve accomplished one thing? Do you always compare yourself to others who are farther along on their journey and let comparison steal your joy? Knowing our baseline gives us a clear picture of where we need to get to work. Whether our comparison is more internal or external, the next three steps can help us find more contentment.
2) Cultivate joy in the journey, not just the destination.
One of the tricky things I’m working on in my powerlifting journey is to appreciate every training day for what it is, not just the big days where I get to set a new PR. I typically enjoy training, but can often spend most of my time thinking about the big days in the “peak week” of the block, the week where I get to touch the heaviest weights. To become more appreciative of each session, I’ve been focusing on not just the number I load on the bar, but also the ways I can practice technique with each rep and sometimes just to slow down and appreciate the fact that I get to have a hobby I enjoy where I become stronger both physically and mentally.
Cultivating joy in the journey for you might look like slowing down and appreciating the small steps that take you to the big accomplishment, or maybe it’s spending more time with the people around you who are on the same path. Regardless of what your destination is, our lives are sweeter when we enjoy the time we spend getting there.
3) Take time to reflect on how far we’ve come.
Whenever I get in a funk about how I wish I was making faster progress in the gym, one of the best ways to get myself out of it is to look back at my earliest training videos. Not only have my numbers increased, but my form and technique is significantly more dialed in now. It can be easy to look at how far others have progressed and forget I, too, have made progress, and it doesn’t matter if my rate of progression is more or less than others. Am I lifting because I enjoy it, or because I want to just beat everyone else? If the second is my goal, I will always be disappointed because there will always be someone stronger. It’s a much better aim to yes, perform well, but also enjoy what I’m doing and appreciate the progress I’ve made.
4) Express gratitude and appreciation for what we’ve accomplished.
Sometimes, we just need to say thank you. As a person of faith, I’ve been convicted of a lack of gratitude many times. My fiance is one of the most grateful people I know, and whenever we pray together, his prayers are filled with thankfulness. I’m striving for more of that in mine, too. We can also express gratitude to the folks who have stood by us as we’ve moved through life: writing thank you notes to professors, bosses, scholarship sponsors can be a great way to both reflect on what we’ve been given while also showing gratitude in a tangible way. It’s pretty hard to be dissatisfied when we’re saying thank you.
Making progress is exciting, setting new goals part of life, and it’s good to be motivated to continue improving. Where we trip up, however, is when we lose the proper balance of appreciation for where we are with ambition for where we’re going. Wherever you’re at today, whether it’s in school, at work, in a season of slowing down, or elsewhere, take a moment. Appreciate where you are, where you’ve been, and wait just a little bit longer before you pick up that goalpost to move it farther down the line.
Journal Prompt of the Week
What area of your life do you have the tendency to move the goalposts the quickest? Which of the four strategies do you plan to implement to change that?