I have struggled with this problem for my whole life where I will hit an achievement, a target, a goal, a milestone or whatever you want to call it and once I have hit that thing I have felt nothing.

I have hit these ideals that I wanted so bad and once I am there it is like I have just been told I stood in dog shit

You may have been through this too

It leaves guys like us feeling hollow about our progress and achievements

It robs us of our momentum and excitement to keep progressing forwards

I see it in myself and the awesome humans that I coach and it is affecting them in every single area of their life

The progress that they have made in their body is crushed by the oiled up 6 pack abs comparison they start looking at on Instagram

The progress they have made in their mindset and happiness is shit on by admiring their idols or their friends highlight reels on Facebook making them feel bad for having an ‘off day’

The success that they have had in saving a certain target or buying a house is not exciting anymore due to the fact that it isn’t their forever home and it is ‘just going to be somewhere to stay for a few years then they’ll rent it out’….

Have you done this?

I have.

But lets do something together now…

Take your right hand, stretch it out really far in front of your body and then slap yourself in the face as hard as you feel necessary (*I take no responsibility for a sore head*)

But seriously, how does this thinking pattern and constant playing down of what we achieved help us at all?

 

I think that this kind of behaviour is kinda like chasing and trying to get to the horizon

 

It’s a clear path and we can see the ideal in front of us but when ever we get closer IT WILL SHIFT AND OUR TARGET WILL KEEP MOVING ON US.

Don’t believe me?

Have you or do you know someone who has done this?

Spend 2 years saving for a house and then once we are there we don’t focus on our commitment and awesome effort to save the deposit and deck it out how we want… We focus on the future mortgage and get down about it

Spend 2 years trying to hit a 200kg deadlift and then once we hit it we immediately bump the weight up to 210kg and miss it then feel like we have failed for the day…

This kind of living is a recipe for unhappiness

 

Do you want to be happy?

I am going to underwhelm you with a solution here…

 

Measure backwards.

 

Look at what you have achieved since you first started your journey

This is real.

This is actually what is happening in your world

Look at ALL of the personal, physical, financially, mental and whatever other growth you have had and appreciate the hell out of them

You have come a long way since you started

You have progressed in certain areas of your life but you are so focused on what you don’t have that you are killing the momentum you could be owning

 

Your ideals are like the horizon, you can use it as a general guide on where you want to go but it will always keep growing and moving so STOP getting down if you haven’t hit your ideal.

 

I have hit what I thought was my ideal and guess what… I was lost as fuck until I found what my next ideal and horizon was

But now for me this way of thinking and measuring backwards is making me happier then ever and allowing me to actually gain momentum, excitement and focus moving forwards into my future

 

I hope it does the same for you

 

Matt ‘Horizon Hater’ Prince