you want to get anywhere you want to go, you've got to do the same thing

Since I am getting ready to leave on my three week doing nothing spree in Europe, it's becoming almost impossible to focus at work. As a result, I spend more time reading blogs than talking to my clients.

I came across this article Why Goal Setting Makes You Cringe that talks about obstacles on the way to achieving your dreams. Most of us are familiar with an old cliche - sky is the limit. An ultimate question is how to overcome fear of failure and stop procrastinating? What does inspire and motivate us to reach the unreachable?

...Suddenly, my GMAT studying comes to mind...

I am not a good test taker. Add an attention deficit disorder to it and you immediately realize that getting an acceptable score is like hoping for current markets to stabilize in one day. Mix it with 10-12 hours of consulting work and extensive traveling and you get the full picture.

So, you can imagine - I was doomed to fail from the very beginning. But I had a vision. A dream. I was not willing to give up. I knew I could beat that damn test if I only study, practice, study more, practice more.

I kept reading articles, blogs, books; spoke to the world trying to solve my problems. Everyone gave a different advice - some scared me, some discouraged me, some were hopeful or unrealistic. I then approached it from the business perspective - I blocked the external noises and, based on gathered information, developed a strategy suitable only for my individual case, my personality, and my abilities.

Convincing myself that I don't have all my life ahead helped me to resist those sweet temptations constantly imposed by my friends during weekends. I knew I had to compromise, give certain habits up in order to gain more at the end.

100 cups of coffee and 10 cigarettes later, I surprised myself by accomplishing what months ago seemed so impossible. Now, I apply the same principle even at work. I always ask myself - what is the objective and how can I achieve it. If I really want to finish a project ahead of time, I know, I am capable. I might disappear from the face of the Earth, buried alive in the work load, but I will get things done.

At the end, it comes to how important your goal is to you. Dreams change, people change. It becomes difficult to evaluate whether something so important today will even matter next year. Assess and look at the big picture. Be realistic, as some dreams should remain in the dream land, while others should become reality.