Achieve the goals you want and not the ones you

How to achieve the goals you actually want, not what you or anyone expects you to achieve, because you should.

Till the age of 18 we had a plan. We were going to school, getting good grades, making our family proud.

Then at 18 we were free.

Something we always dreamed of – free to choose what we want to do with our life.

Well, kinda.

We followed a path that society and our parents told us to follow – we went to university.

At that time in our life it didn’t even occur to us that anything else was an option back then.

So we decided we needed to study something that’s hard, something we're interested in and will for sure be profitable in the future.

Biochemistry it is then.

How to achieve the goals you want, not the ones you think you should

We didn’t know what biochemistry was, we didn’t understand what biochemists do, we just knew we liked chemistry from school and it sounded like something that will make us good money in the future. At least, there were articles everywhere how there’s a shortage of biochemists and biologists, so we decided to go with it. We owed this to our future self and our parents.

And we hated every single minute of it.

The work in the laboratory, the constant struggle to make or save money to support myself while doing this, the long hours studying.

We hated every part of the process, even though we are now grateful for every single thing we learned during that time about our biology and life around us.

But the fact is – during that time we didn’t learn ANYTHING about myself. We thought we were shy and don’t want to be around people. We thought that things needed to be hard to be “worth it”. To us if you enjoyed what you did – you’re not doing enough.

Well at the end we got our Masters in something we never wanted, something we didn’t want to pursue further and felt lost and like life just doesn’t make sense.

But life did make sense, we just was too afraid to trust and see it.

We thought that choosing something that’s secure and highly appreciated by others was what we should be doing.

Our belief was that if we do something that’s simple, we're not doing something worthwhile.

And while we can say we've outgrown this for the most part, till this day we catch myself trying to overcomplicate even the most simple things to make them seem worthwhile. To make them good enough for others and myself.

However, since that time we've grown a lot and learned a lot.

We learned that taking the simple (for you) way, the one that’s most enjoyable – even if it’s not that profitable at the beginning – is always the right way.

Note we're not saying take the easiest way and play the lottery until you win it. Or fill out surveys to get gift cards. To us, doing this is not the most enjoyable way to spend your time and therefore not the right way. But when we create something we 100% stand behind and love – that’s the biggest reward of all.

So here are a few steps we noticed help us to set the goals we actually want and achieve them.

How To Achieve What You Actually Want, Not What You Should

1. Open your mind and notice opportunities

In order to know what you want to do with your life, you need to be open and curious about opportunities. Opportunities are all around us, if we’re just willing to see them.

Starting our blog was one of the most rewarding and therapeutic experiences in our life. It’s a place we get to be who we are and help others by doing so.

But it wasn’t something we would’ve thought of 7 years ago. Our friend always joked we should write a recipe book once we finish studying, because we loved cooking so much. We thought, yeah, yeah. Like that was too simple. Making recipes? It’s not worth it. Nobody needs recipes, people can figure it out themselves.

Then one day, we actually wanted to make brownies. But we had never made brownies and we didn’t know how to. So we googled a recipe for healthy brownies. We are not sure, but we think the Oh She Glows blog came up first in the results. We looked around that website and loved every single recipe there. And shortly after, we realized that this website was created by one human being only. It was a girl from Canada that took (BEAUTIFUL) pictures of the meals she made at home.

She wasn’t part of a huge corporation or a magazine – she was just her and this was her space to share her passion with the world.

Something inside us felt it. We could do that and we actually want to do it. This was the moment we opened our mind and noticed this new opportunity. It had never crossed our mind before.

2. Let yourself do the simple thing

So even though we noticed this new opportunity and it was just right there for us to grab it (we simply had to buy hosting and start writing) – it took us 3 years to finally start our blog.

Somehow our mind couldn’t let this happen. It was too simple.

We struggled with how simple it was and how many people were already doing it.

It felt like we wouldn’t be anything special.

Like we would be a nobody.

But we did it anyway and contrary to all our beliefs: creating and MAINTAINING a blog wasn’t simple at all. It was hard work and we learned A LOT about all parts of life and about myself.

What we were also wrong about was that nobody would care about our blog and that there are way too many out there for someone to come to ours.

But people did, they came and kept coming.

We had many other “businesses” that seemed simple before we attempted doing them. But the difference was – we didn’t get any reward out of them. Besides making some money, we didn’t feel like we had done something worthwhile. And we could’ve made more money doing something we enjoyed more.

So if you feel like something’s a good idea, but it doesn’t seem too challenging or like it’s gonna be worth it – try anyway. That’s the only way to know for sure.

3. Do things for you, not others.

This might seem selfish, but when you think about it – you’re doing everyone around you a favor.

People you love don’t want to see you miserable just because they think something’s better for you.

What stopped us many times from doing the things that actually made us happy was this question:

“What would they think if they find out?”

Now, we didn’t want to do any porn, sell drugs or something like that – we’re talking about working in sales or writing a blog.

But without ever voicing it, we knew that we don’t live our life because others approve it.

Others might not approve us staying at home when we're sick – should we not do it?

They might think it’s disgusting to eat a salad for lunch – should we eat a steak with French fries instead? No.

You do what you feel is best for you. When you know, you know. This is important when you’re on a journey that doesn’t repay you instantly.

Our mom, our sister, our dad – everyone around us asked us for years why we're doing this blog and wasting our time. But we kept doing it and we believed in it.

Other people will always have their opinions, but the only opinion that matters is yours.

Now it doesn’t mean you should share everything you do with them – in fact if you think they’d discourage you in the beginning – don’t. Work on whatever you’re doing until you have the trust and confidence and then share it. If people find out, they find out – not the end of the world.

4. Know and remember your why

This is huge when setting goals, and it actually should be the one of the first steps.

Know why you’re actually doing something. Get informed.

This would’ve saved us the years we spent studying biochemistry. If we knew what we were doing and what we were hoping to do with our life in 5 years, we would’ve probably done something entirely different.

We always wanted to travel, impact people all over the world and to have enough money to support myself and our family. We wanted to not ever worry about money. Not to be wasteful with money, but when we had the opportunity to do something we wanted – to be able to afford it.

Now, where does biochemistry fit here?

Nowhere.

We needed to study at least 8 years to start making good money (because you need a PhD) and we were going to work in a laboratory or at a desk somewhere consulting companies.

We could’ve made the same money studying something like, we don’t know, business or marketing in just 3-4 years and our chances of business travel would’ve been much higher.

But we wouldn’t really be impacting anyone with both of these.

Now with blogging we have the opportunity to do all three. We're not quite there yet, but we see growth and potential and that’s all that matters.

And to stay motivated (and sane) we keep reminding myself of our why periodically.

5. How will this change you?

One thing we ask myself when new opportunities come is: How will this change us?

Not our life, not our situation, but us. Will we be happier? Will it make us grow and learn? Will it make us like & trust myself more? What new skill will we learn?

For example working in sales made us more outgoing and confident when talking to strangers.

This is HUGE. It’s something we never planned and was in fact the scariest thing about sales for us. We were always shy and took a lot of time to warm up to strangers.

But here’s the thing: when you do something you’re scared of, despite the fear – you become confident. And motivated. And you might actually discover something new about yourself, you just might surprise yourself.

This is what happened for us. We got to know many new, awesome people thanks to this scary opportunity and it did shape us into a person we like and trust more.

6. Plant, then let go & grow

Okay, so when you do have your goal, the most important step is: DO.

Do whatever you need to do and then do it again and again and again.

Don’t follow things around and try to fix them all the time.

Wait for what you planted to grow.

Sometimes we want something to happen so much, that we think we need to give it a push. But somehow that push is not in the right direction.

For example, sometimes we feel like we've written a great piece of content and it just has to get out there and get famous. So we push.

But. Sometimes it doesn’t happen – you can’t influence these things.

All you can and need to do is plant your seed, let go and grow.

Then you have more time to plant new healthy seeds and let them grow as well.

Whenever we do this – we see a reliable results.

7. Enjoy the ride

So not everything about your road to the goal will be sunshine and blue skies.

There are days we just don’t feel like doing anything.

But we do our best and we make sure to enjoy the time, because when we don’t, whenever we try to push through we end up not wanting to do ANYTHING for weeks.

And as we know, consistency is the most important part of achieving a goal.

We found the only way to be consistent is to give myself breaks and to not think of myself as a machine, but as a human.

8. Focus on the main result, don’t obsess over milestones

With so much NOISE out there, it’s tough to stay focused on your goal.

We set all these mile stones that we think we need to achieve in order to achieve our goals, but we found they only stress us out and make us do things we don’t want to do.

If 2 months ago we wanted to fit in a dress and now this dress fits perfectly already, why do we feel like we have to lose 4 more pounds?

Even though we like the way we look. Because we thought we needed to when we started?

Adjust your goals as you go and don’t obsess with numbers that don’t matter.

Work on the main result you need to achieve – again keep an open mind for new opportunities and let go of things that don’t serve you.

Alright so now a recap:

Open your mind to see a new opportunity or recognize an old one. What can you do that can potentially make you more successful or happier?
Know your why. Why would you want to achieve this? How will it change your life?
What’s something simple you can and want to do? Let yourself do it. Doing something that’s simple for you won’t be underwhelming don’t worry – there’s always something to learn.
Forget what others are going to say.
Will this simple thing change you? Will you learn new skills that will benefit you further in life? How will you grow as a person? Will this make you trust and like yourself more?
Do it and do it over and over again.
Not as simple as you thought? Maybe you need a break, so you can stay consistent.
What was your goal again? Remember it and don’t obsess over unimportant numbers.

Okay guys, we know we talked a lot about myself here. Still, we hope you can relate and find something helpful in these words. Something that will give you that final push to make the decision you want to make and not one that you feel obligated to make.