What is your goal?
I want you to think about this question while reading the rest of the text; I think it’s important to have this thing bothering you in the back of your mind.
In fact, this is a difficult question to answer, and I believe few can answer it as soon as they read it. The same goes for me. Goals are things that lead us, humans, to achieve things, whether the goal is just a distant motivation or a necessity.
For me, at the time of writing, I cannot answer this question. See, I should say upfront that what I write here or will write does not touch on anything regarding coaching motivation or anything of the sort. No. People need to define their goals and work until they achieve them. Coaches are people who sell a need and the solution for it (as any other salesperson does).
Without further ado, I find it interesting to talk about goals. A few years ago I defined some goals and I believe I managed to achieve them. My first big goal was to get into a university and a course I wanted (though at the time I didn’t know any of those things, but I wanted to enter a good university). It all started when I realized I was getting “too old,” and that I needed to act in life—that is, to set a direction and decide what I wanted to do after high school. This moment hit me hard; it’s truly a shock, a turning point, in a way (without wanting to sound too dramatic). Then, shortly after realizing this, Covid-19 hit the world (including me). What was the solution? Studying on my own, without help from school. At that time, there were already online courses for the ENEM, but I, being a “tight-fisted” person when it comes to spending money, didn’t agree with having to pay to pass the ENEM. I thought: if education should be free, why do I, right now, need to pay for it? Note: nowadays I think a bit differently—spend your money on it if necessary, as it saves time and time is precious. Anyway, I had that as my goal, and only that. I spent 2 years without working, spending most of my time indoors, focused on this goal. Look, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds: during this time I did indeed “miss” many things, like opportunities to leave the house more and socialize, but this wasn’t harmful, as I achieved other things, like a love for studying and the habit of reading. With a nostalgic look, I believe this was one of the best times of my life, despite a virus devastating the entire Earth.
During this period, this was my goal: studying and getting into a college. Because of this, to help me with my exam, everything I did revolved around that (in a way): the books I read were classic books, which would later help me in my essay. I didn’t read them out of obligation, but more out of curiosity, really. They were and are books that make you think inwardly, about yourself and about the world, no matter how old and how different the eras depicted in the books were. Jumping forward in time, I managed to get into the college I wanted and into one of the best colleges in the region: Computer Science at UFCG.
And now? I thought after passing. My next goal then was to decide to prepare for this new journey: college. What could I do? Two things came to mind:
- I need to improve my mathematical foundation, as I was going to take a STEM course;
- I need to improve my (until then almost non-existent) programming skills, as it would be necessary.
With my new goals, again, I focused only on that, in the solitary way I was used to, although motivated and confident. One of the things I did was pick up a high school math book, read it, and solve it from cover to cover. Spoiler: I couldn’t finish the whole book, as it had a bit more than 1200 pages (I don’t remember exactly; if I’m mistaken, it was more than that). Still, I achieved one thing: I filled about 4 medium notebooks with pages of solved questions, with the solutions and the mistakes made (along with the correct version next to them). This basically yielded half of the book done. Someone might think: “Really? And did you like it?” To both questions, I say yes. Honestly, it was even fun; I used to enjoy feeling challenged by the next question to come, and I liked even more the feeling of spending several minutes thinking about the solution, writing and erasing a solution I had thought of, and finally feeling confident in a definitive answer and thus being able to check if what I had thought was correct. Part of the time I got it right; other times I got it wrong. In both situations, I enjoyed the feeling: either I had managed to solve a problem I had spent a lot of time thinking about, or I learned a new way of thinking about a problem I hadn’t seen. The feeling of missing a question meant I was learning and was “dumber” than I thought. But that was cool.
Something similar happened regarding programming. Generally, I research a lot about things before choosing, which makes me a naturally indecisive person. So, I chose to take Harvard’s free course for people starting in computing. The course was CS50x. To this day, I strongly recommend this course for anyone starting out who has an intermediate level of English. While taking this course, I experienced things similar to the math problems. There were several problems at the end of each class. The problems, although they partly had some starter code, were not easy. In fact, they were quite interesting problems. By problems, I don’t mean “find the longest substring in this string” or things like that. They were problems with a whole context and story behind them, which kept me engaged and amused. Because of this, I spent hours trying to solve a certain problem. At that time, AI as we know it didn’t exist, but the Internet already did, and very few times did I look up some answers online. Most of the time, however, I suffered and suffered to solve that problem. For example, in the SQL class, one of the problems was to solve a criminal case in a fictional city that existed only in some files (with clues and testimonies) and in a SQLite database. Yes, that’s right. It was so much fun to feel like an investigator while solving that (it took me about 2 days of thinking to get the correct answer).
All this happened, I believe, because I had a goal. Everything that didn’t relate to these things was invisible to me. In fact, I don’t remember many things besides the ones I’ve already mentioned. A clear and defined goal led me to places I’m proud to have known, whether it’s the great university I’m part of or the great courses I’ve taken and miss.
This text is more of a rant than anything else. Today, I don’t have goals like before. I haven’t experienced the fun I described. I stopped reading the books I liked so much. Was it college and responsibilities? I don’t think so.
Anyway, one must think of a goal and follow it like a religion of fanatics. It is necessary to give up some things to conquer others. It is necessary to feel “dumb” or uncomfortable in order to then learn and feel good. It is necessary to know oneself and learn from ourselves and the people we love around us. One must think of one goal after another. Otherwise, what will guide the decisions and sacrifices of the life that lies ahead?
I don’t want to make anyone sad, not even myself. We sometimes need to be bothered and instigated, poked in a way.
What is your goal?