A Goal is not always meant to be reached- 3 Key Tips

This article is a discussion of the motivational words by Bruce Lee – a goal is not always meant to be reached. Key points to think about are the Power of vision and its motivation, the importance of having large goals and how to use them to drive your energy and passion forward.

There are 3 components in this discu

• Meaning of – A goal is not always meant to be reached
• What is the purpose of the goal if not success?
• How to embrace failure in your progress?

Meaning of A Goal is not always meant to be reached

What’s the meaning when Bruce Lee says – “A goal is not always meant to be reached”? In this context, we treat the goal as a dream, a passion that provides a purpose for your life. While talking about creating a vision for your personal life, we highlight the importance of baseline standards and values.

These goals/visions provide you with a baseline standard to aim for. The essence of this quote is to ensure that you never aim low in life. If you aim low, although you succeed, there is a question to ask – ‘Are you truly exploring all your abilities?’. What if you are compromising your possibilities by aiming low?

It is similar to Michael Phelps quote – Goals should never be easy, they should force you to work hard. The value and meaning of these words from Bruce Lee are merely to say that the goals should provide you a guiding point – not a be all and end all.

What is the Purpose of the goal if it can’t be reached?

There is a common misconception of success and failure. You’re considered a failure if you don’t reach your goals and success if you do. But no one questions you about why you have these goals in the first place?

They don’t want to understand the importance of these goals in your life and why they mean so much to you. Sometimes, people don’t even ask these questions.

Instead, look within to try and understand the purpose of your goals and dreams. What are they telling you and why they are so important to you. Often these dreams are expected to scare you, but the purpose is to drive you ahead and force you to think of a life beyond limitations.

Surely, we can think of many reasons to hold us back. Just like these challenges, there will be opportunities as well. These inspirational words from Bruce Lee are only telling us to forget the tick box exercise of balancing reality with optimism and pessimism. Instead, accept your dreams for the power of motivation they give you. Then find a strategy to make it happen. The purpose of your goal is not to provide you a strategy, but to provide a purpose and an answer to the question – Why am I doing this?

How to accept and use failures to succeed?

Discussions about goals, success and failure can never be complete without talking about failure. Unfortunately, most times people treat failure as an enemy and something to be ashamed of.

To be fair, the meaning of failure is just that something is not working. It is sending you a signal that something needs to change and asking you for action. Contrary to being an enemy, it is a friendly emotion asking you to work on something. Sure, it impacts your progress and dreams.

That’s not all that a failure is doing. It is also giving you important feedback about your approach. I recall a beautiful quote – Success and Failure leave clues. It is up to us to choose what to listen to. Failure isn’t this one big thing that pulls you down suddenly. There is always a pattern. If you look closely, you’ll be able to notice this in behaviour, small feedback from people who are true to you. And also in objective outcomes.

Instead of treating failure as an enemy, treat it dispassionately, it is a mere outcome. And truthfully, if you have a large enough goal that scares you, failures are imminent. Make sure that the quality of your failures is high – that’s often a great sign of progress. There is no point in failing at simple stuff.

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

― Bruce Lee (Source)