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My final semester, I left my dream job to focus on graduating. The hardest part was walking away from a healthy check, a great culture and good leadership to go get a degree I wasn't even sure I still wanted. But getting the degree was so much more than checking off a box, so I had to finish it.
On the floor, about to get the degree. Already somewhere else.
While I was sitting on the floor about to receive my degree, all I could think about was what was next. By the time they called my name, I had already moved the goalpost. The moment I'd worked years for was over before I ever let myself have it.
As soon as the graduation was over, I went back to the hotel room to focus on the business and started writing my book. I never really sat back to say, hey dude, you just did that.
Have you ever hit a goal you chased for years and moved the goalpost before you even celebrated?
I think a lot of us know that feeling. You pray for the job, and a year later it's just your job. You save for the house, and now it's just the mortgage. You finally get the title you used to see on other people's profiles, and by the next quarter you're scrolling past somebody else's announcement wondering why you still feel behind.
I was watching Jimmy Carr on The Diary of a CEO this week, and he has a name for this. He calls it life dysmorphia. Life is "objectively better and subjectively worse" than it's ever been. You can look at your own life and not see it.
That's what happened to me on that floor. Nothing was wrong. I had just finished the thing I walked away from my dream job to do. I just couldn't see it, because the second you get something, it becomes normal, and the second it becomes normal, you go looking for the next thing. That's the goalpost. It doesn't move on its own. We move it.
So maybe the move is to chase a little less and build a little more. Build a life that doesn't ride on one big moment, because that moment is going to pass, just like mine did on that floor.
And before you go chasing the next thing, turn around and look at what's already behind you. Whatever you finished this year. Whatever you built. Whoever you showed up for when it was hard. The version of you from five years ago would look at your life right now and not believe it. You've done more than you give yourself credit for. So this week, before the next goal, say thank you for this one. Thank God, thank the people who carried you, thank yourself for not quitting. Gratitude is the thing that makes the goalpost stop moving.
Jimmy Carr's full conversation with Steven Bartlett is worth a listen. It's almost two hours, so save it for a long drive.
Your 1% this week. Before Wednesday, pick one small moment you're going to build into every day this week. Ten minutes outside, a real breakfast, calling somebody you love on the drive home. Then notice it while it's happening.
Hit reply and tell me what yours is.
Know somebody who just crossed a finish line and is already on to the next thing? Forward them this.
If somebody forwarded this to you, you can get The Invisible Letter free every Sunday at derecco.com.
