How long should a goal take?
How long should a goal take?
6 months, 1 year, 5 years? 10 years? 13 years ? Or 17+ years?
Most coaches will tell you that a goal should take no more than 6 months to a year to be accomplished. Because if it takes longer then that it will never happen.
But the truth is…. some goals will take longer and some are best when they take their due time. Why? Because although you may feel ready to do it, you may really not be. You may not have the right mix of mindset, abilities, time, resources to be able to really manifest how it should really take place.
This is what I learned from taking 17 years to meet a goal.
Yes! You read it right…. 17 years.
At the tender age of 24 (yes, now I can look back and say, ahhhh….. so young), I thought writing for children will be easier to become a writer (little did I know). So, I enrolled in an NYU Children’s Writing Class. At that time, I thought I was going to be a published author right after the class. I thought I was ready for the world to know stories about girls like me. I submitted many a manuscripts and tried to learn everything about the publishing world, but nothing I did really came to fruition.
So I went about my life as if “it was not meant to be.”
And life got busy- I became a sales and marketing executive (with many renditions), got married, and had 4 kids, quit my job without a plan (not by choice, but the best decision) and then last year the whispers (as Oprah calls them) started.
First in March, I was cleaning my attic and I saw for the very first time in a loooong time, my full of dust over stuffed college yellow folder. In it was all my stories, poems, monologues and the works. At first, I stared at it as if in disbelief to then realizing that I was spending too much time going through it since the kids pick up was fast approaching. I placed it the middle of my dark brown dinning room table, and just moved it when I needed to clean the area. I thought, eventually I will get to it.
Then came June, and unfortunately for our family sad news and diagnoses of my mother-in-law. Unfortunately, she has one of the rarest Frontal Temporal Disorders (the demential family) called Primary Progressive Aphasia…. an extremely rare neurological disorder where she would lose her ability to understand language, write, read and socialize. At first she would become mute, then lose all understanding of basic language in all forms, to then be trapped in her body, to perhaps eventually resulting in dementia or Alzheimer’s.
The news hit us hard, and all I could think to myself besides all the feelings and the sadness of the realization of her future, seeing my husband going through this news, was if I couldn’t speak, write or read what would I regret more? What was she resenting? What would I resent having a diagnoses like this?
And that is when the yellow overstuffed folder stuck out, and I opened the folder and the first story I saw was Camila and the Rain .
And I can happily tell you this year, I published Camila and the Rain, and yes it took me 17 years to do it.
And here is the funny and most interesting thing about it… I didn’t change the story that much from how I wrote it when I was 24. I just made it relevant to the times. But what was different was that I was finally truly was ready and willing to learn, get frustrated, to cry, make mistakes…. to make this goal a reality. I was mentally ready.
And here we are… Camila and the Rain is here. And it hit the best selling list at #19 within the Children’s Popular Music category on Amazon.
Would I have gotten the same results back then? Most likely not.
So I tell you, that unlike what you hear… a goal without a timeline is just not a dream. It may just mean it needs a long pause, or that you are not ready for it, or that you are not willing to take the necessary steps to make it happen yet.
It may mean that it needs its time to breathe to affect the world the way you intend it to do.
Now tell me, what dream did not come to fruition? Which goal did you try but it never panned out. Where you ready for it? And if not, what are you willing to do about it right now?