A Story about Going at Your Own Pace, Plus How to Reach Any Goal
“Maybe I’m too late,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “Maybe my dream’s already passed me by.”
I was sitting in a quiet corner of a cafe. A colleague of mine had just finished telling me she was quitting the job we both worked and moving to an island in Asia to publish her novel.
She said she was finally pursuing her dream.
As she finished her coffee, she asked me about mine.
“What are you passionate about? What do you really want to do with your life? What’s your dream?”
I had this answer locked and loaded for years.
“I’d like to be a full-time fitness coach and writer,” I replied. “I want to run my own business coaching people remotely, while also contributing to my blog and fitness publications.”
It was a sexy proposition.
Be my own boss. Work from my laptop. Change peoples’ lives through good nutrition and exercise. Build a community through my blog.
It was also going nowhere.
I hadn’t even taken the first step towards making that dream a reality.
That’s because I made other choices along the way: I went to college, studied marketing, got a job at Google, and moved abroad.
All the while, I read blogs and books of guys who were seemingly living my dream in parallel. I was engaged with my dream, but I wasn’t actively working towards it, living in a state of dream limbo.
Back in the cafe, I had a sobering thought:
“They accomplished those things in their early twenties. I’m 28 now and have nothing to show for my dream life they were already living.”
In that cafe, for the first time, I thought I was truly too late.
That’s when the tears welled up in my eyes, obscuring the vision of my dreams gone by.
I suspect my situation is relatable.
The problem was that I was measuring my life’s progress using someone else’s yardstick.
For example, a fitness coach and writer I idolized had already built a successful training business and blog – as well as published a few books – by the time he was 25. For years, I used him as a benchmark for my own development.
“Okay, if he got his training certifications by 19, opened his business and started his blog at 20, published his first book at 23… Well, then, that’s what I’ll try and do,” I thought to myself.
Needless to say, none of that happened.
That’s because we often see the product of other people’s work; very rarely do we see the process.
I had no idea what opportunities he had access to, challenges he needed to overcome, or sacrifices he needed to make in order to live his life on that timeline. All I saw was the result, and said, “I want that,” without ever considering the tradeoffs of what “having that” really meant.
Because of comparing myself to him, I thought I’d be “behind” if I didn’t reach those milestones and goals at the same time.
It’s easy to see how this can be paralyzing and stop anyone from pursuing things they find interesting, meaningful, or impactful.
A few months later, I was on a flight home to visit my family for Christmas, journaling an answer to a provocative question:
“What are you putting off in your life because of fear?”
I wrote about coaching, running my own business, and starting this blog. I wrote that I was afraid I was too late, and that I had already failed.
Then it hit me:
Just because someone else did it before me doesn’t mean I can’t do it for myself right now. All that matters is that I start.
At home, I purchased the materials needed to become a certified nutrition coach.
I also discovered my own opportunities and sacrifices I needed to make to reach my goal.
I studied before and after work each day, took quizzes and exams on the weekends, and attended virtual office hours with course instructors. I encountered – and overcame – challenges on my time and energy, balancing my studies with other important areas of my life, like work, relationships, and my own health and fitness.
It wasn’t as easy as I convinced myself it would be over all those years.
After several months, I passed the course and began coaching in early 2020. I worked remotely with clients all over the world and helped them lose fat, foster healthier relationships with their bodies and food, start exercising, and feel empowered. I also started the very blog you’re reading right now.
After all those years daydreaming and comparing, I finally chose to start.
I measured progress on my own terms.
I started using my own yardstick.
Had I continued to use someone else’s, I may never have pursued coaching or made the necessary sacrifices to help change peoples’ lives.
Here’s the most important lesson I learned from this experience:
When thinking about your interests or goals, the most important thing is to start and make progress that makes sense for your life – not someone else’s.
So what if someone else started earlier? You can start right now.
Regardless of your circumstances, starting is all that matters.
So… How do you start?
If you need help taking the first step, I’d recommend using the “Goal, Skill, Practice, Action” framework from Precision Nutrition. This exercise helps you distill big, meaty goals into practical actions you can confidently do every day. Here’s an example:
Goal: Where you want to go. This could be, “Pass a coaching course.”
Skill: An ability needed to reach that goal. To pass any course, you need to study consistently. In order to study consistently, you need good time management skills. Therefore, our Skill could be, “Manage my time effectively.”
Practice: What you need to do to build the Skill. To manage your time effectively, you have to make the time in your schedule. So, our Practice will be, “Make time.”
Action: A small, specific thing you do daily to support your Goal. In this case, our Action could be, “Review my daily/weekly calendar and book a 20 minute time slot to study for my coaching course.”
This is exactly how I structured studying for my own coaching. I took things one, 20-minute study block at a time, every day.
Give this exercise a shot before getting started. It will help increase your confidence that the actions you’re taking each day will bring you closer to reaching – and not just dreaming about – your goal.
In closing, I’ll leave you with some wisdom from Arthur Ashe…
Start where you are
Use what you have
Do what you can
And remember to use your own yardstick.
Ian Estabrook 