WHEN TO STOP CHASING A GOAL OR DREAM

I love having goals. I sometimes feel lost without them. My website/blog and my business are a culmination of goals I had that have now started to come to fruition. I have accomplished and reached a lot of my goals through the years. However, there were many goals I have had along the way that I either reworked or just stopped chasing period. Why have I done this? Does this mean I am quitter? Does this mean I failed? Will these goals haunt me in the future? The answer to this in most cases is no.

Through life our priorities and needs often change. We gain greater wisdom through time and realize some of the goals we once had are fruitless, no longer interest us, or are not in our best interest to pursue. We can also realize that our particular approach to accomplishing a goal is completely wrong, and that we need to rework the goal and our approach. I have had quite a few of these experiences in my life. Hence, while it is important to chase your goals, it is also important to continually evaluate your goals to see if they should still be goals in your life, or if you need to change your approach. In this writing I am going to share a few goals I once had that are no longer on my list of things to accomplish, or goals that needed to be completely reworked. I will also share the lessons I have learned in relation to each goal.

1. Visit every county or county equivalent in US

I am passionate about travel and going to places I have not been. Some would call me an extreme traveler. In December of 2020 I took a road trip through 14 states where I drove a total of 5063 miles (8149 km) alone in just seven days. Why did I do this besides loving to travel and drive? It was part of chasing two separate goals I have. I have a personal goal to spend a night in every US state, Canadian province, and on every continent except Antarctica, (as I do not need to pay thousands of dollars to sleep in snow). On this trip I removed four states from my list leaving me with just 11 to go. (NOTE: I still have 7 provinces and 2 continents to lay my head in as well). Another goal I have is to visit the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the US. I was able to go through many of these as well on the trip leaving me with just 8 more metro areas to visit. Therefore, I was passionately chasing after a goal by taking this trip. However, I once had another travel goal.

In the US there are 3143 counties or county equivalents. Texas alone has 254 of these. For those outside the US, each state is subdivided geographically by counties or an equivalent geography. Some counties are very small such as Arlington County, Virginia at 26 square miles (67 sq km), and some such as San Bernardino County, California are larger than entire states. Every part of the US, with the exception of parts of remote Alaska, falls within a county or county equivalent, (and even in Alaska the US Census Bureau has designated special census areas outside of Alaska’s boroughs as county equivalents). Hence, there are potentially a lot of places to go.

Out of these 3143 county areas I have visited 1577. I originally had a goal to visit every one of them. However, a couple of years ago while driving through rural parts of Virginia and West Virginia I realized I was not enjoying doing this. I was even getting moody and tired while driving around. Plus, it was nerve wracking driving through some of these small rural towns too as the police there look for every opportunity to pull you over and give you a ticket, (and I got one because I accelerated too early to the new speed limit posted about 50 feet ahead of the sign in a small Virginia town). With this, I began to question the value of this goal. After all, some counties are extremely difficult to get to. In the case of Alaska’s Census areas, I would need spend a lot of money to go to places where there is literally nothing for hundreds of miles around with the exception of a village of 50 people. This does not sound like an appealing way to spend my money or a good form of entertainment. Hence, this is a goal I have let go.

It is important to mention that there is a difference between letting a goal or dream go because it hard versus letting in go because it is no longer an enjoyable goal to pursue. When I was working on my second master’s degree, I certainly did not enjoy all my class work I needed to do in some of my classes. At times it was very challenging work, and the work I was doing was not something I planned to do in my career going forward. However, at the end of the day my goal was still to get the degree. I still wanted to accomplish this. Stopping would have been quitting, and the goal would have probably haunted me. Therefore, I trudged through until I achieved my goal. In the case of the county traveling, it was challenging as well. However, it became no longer important to me that I reached the goal. It did not matter to me if I did this, yet it did matter to me getting the master’s degree. Therefore, in the county case, it was good I chose to stop instead of continuing to pursue something that I cared less about accomplishing. If your emotions are no longer into the goal, and the result is not going to make you feel a sense of accomplishment, then it does not make you a quitter to stop. What is does is make you smart. It was smart that I stopped this goal.

2. Moving into the city after my divorce

After my separation from my son’s mother in 2013, I moved into a small apartment for the next year in Rock Hill, SC near my marital home. I chose this apartment because it was economical, and I wanted time to figure out what single life would be like for me. I never planned on staying in this apartment permanently, but I figured it would be a good transitional place for me. It served its purpose well. However, as with most leases, after year I had a decision to make on whether I wanted to stay or go.

Rock Hill is a suburb of Charlotte, NC about 25 miles from the Uptown area of the city. Like most suburbs, Rock Hill caters to families. Hence, there was not a lot of social life opportunities for someone single and in their 40’s back in 2014. Therefore, after my separation my social life really developed in the Charlotte area rather than in the Rock Hill area. At the time I was also working for the City of Charlotte, so ideally, I had a goal to live in the city. Late in 2014, I reached this goal. So, if this article is about abandoning or reworking goals, then why I am mentioning a goal I achieved? I mention this because it was a goal that needed to be reevaluated and reworked in my life after it was achieved.

When I lived in Charlotte my son started kindergarten. Since I no longer was a resident of South Carolina, and because my ex and I ultimately chose her address to be the primary address for school, he would start school in Rock Hill. I still had my son 3 or 4 nights every week. Many of these days fell on school nights. Therefore, I needed to drive him from Charlotte to Rock Hill in the morning, and then drive back into Charlotte for work. In the evenings, I also had to make this drive to Rock Hill and then back to Charlotte when I had him. With Charlotte being one of the fastest growing cities in the US this meant I sometimes did not get my son to my place until 6:00PM or later. This only gave me time to make dinner, give him and bath, and then put him to bed. This was not at all the type of father I wanted to be. I wanted to spend quality time with him. Therefore, after my lease was up, I moved back to Rock Hill and have been there since.

In this case my goals had to be reworked. While I wanted to live in the city, I wanted to have quality time with my son even more. Would I still like to live in the city? Maybe someday, but that time is not now. The great thing is from 2015 when I left Charlotte, to now in 2021, Rock Hill and the South Carolina suburbs of Charlotte has become much more singles friendly as the area is still experiencing exponential growth. Therefore, reworking this goal helped me get the best of both worlds.

Did I fail at my goal of living in the city by moving back to Rock Hill? In a since yes, but I do not think of it in that way. I think of it as the goal needed to change based on my needs. Being an active father was much more important to me than where I lived. When my son becomes an adult could I move back into the city if I wanted to? Sure, but who knows what my life will be like in 7.5 years. My circumstances may be completely different. Therefore, there is no longer a need for me to have the goal to live in the city. I can just drive into the city when I want to.

3. To run 30 minutes straight every Sunday

This is a goal I decided to stop pursuing this past Sunday. My goal was to run for 30 minutes every Sunday to strengthen the muscles in my knee. Why was this a goal? First, I will share the story of my knees, then I will get into the goal.

One of the things that inspired my weight loss was finding out my right leg is an inch and half (4 cm) longer than my left. I did not discover this until visited an orthopedic surgeon and a physical therapist at age 40. The reason I originally went to them was my knees would sometimes lock, and it would cause immense pain when they did. There were times I needed to actually pop my knee to avoid it from locking. Add to the fact I was carrying around 300 lbs. (136 kg) my knees were in bad shape. Neither of my knees tracked correctly. I was told that there was a chance if I did not do something, I may not have mobility when I got older. The thought of losing my independence was certainly motivating. Therefore, this was the start of my successful weight loss journey where I brought my weight down to 165 lbs. (75 kg). However, even after losing the weight, my knees did not fully recover.

When I run now, it does not take long for pain to hit my kneecap. On my run I did last Sunday, I was in pain after just 10 minutes of running. This pain is sharp and constant, and it becomes worse when going up and down stairs or hills. Recently, I read an article stating this type of knee pain could be the result of the muscles in the knees not being strong enough. It is a condition called runner’s knee. Therefore, I felt maybe if I pushed through the pain, then my knee muscles would get stronger. This was not happening. My knees performed worse with each Sunday run I completed. This past Sunday, my third Sunday run, I ran my last mile of my 30-minute run slower than I could have walked it. My run split times increased two minutes a mile with each run. Therefore, not only was the pain still there, but I was also performing much worse. This got me thinking the muscles may not be the issue, and I could be doing some real damage to my knee. It was not worth the risk to continue this goal.

Going forward, I know I will need to talk to a physical therapist or an orthopedic doctor about my knees to see if it would be possible to run again someday. I will also need to note what exercises I can do and cannot do. When I do the leg press or hamstring curls at the gym my knee is not affected, but squats are horribly painful. Hiking is fine unless I have large elevation changes on my hike, and even with that the knee does not start hurting on the elevation hike until about 10 miles (16 km) into the hike. Flat surfaces do not affect my knee when hiking. Therefore, I am learning my limits. Pro athletes often do the same on giving up their goals when they reach their limits, and their bodies can give no more. In their case they walk away and retire from their lifelong goal of playing their sport professionally. Learning your limits, just like me with running and pro athletes performing their trade, is very much needed when setting goals or know when to stop pursuing them.

In short, the takeaway from all of this is that it is always worthwhile to review the goals. You should ask yourself if you should continue pursuing them. They may no longer be healthy goals to pursue mentally, physically, or emotionally. They may come into conflict with other more important goals as well. If you decide in these cases the goals are not worth pursuing, then it does not make you a quitter or a failure. At times it means you are making an intelligent decision. Sometimes it is best to walk away from a goal.