Once upon a time, a prince lived in a faraway land.
The prince was obsessed with one sole pursuit.
He aimed to be the best arrow shooter, to hit the bull’s eye with divine precision, and to be infallible at every shot.
The prince traveled far and wide to learn from all the archery masters he could find.
One day, he met a young man. The young man was standing near a round archery target, and the arrow was placed in the bull’s eye with unparalleled exactness.
The prince was dumbfounded and extremely excited.
He had met the greatest archery master of his time, and all his travels would end if only the young man agreed to teach him his expertise.
The prince approached the young man and asked him eagerly,
Please, tell me, how do you shoot the bull’s eye with such incredible precision? I am willing to pay any amount of money if you can teach me to achieve such mastery.
The young man realized the prince had misunderstood his aptitude.
Your Highness, I am afraid you have misconstrued what you have seen. I am no master of archery. I am, however, a skillful artist. I place the arrow in the middle of my board and I draw perfect circles all around it.
Photo by Remy Gieling on Unsplash
My father told me this story when I was a young girl. Decades later, it still rings in my mind. As I get older, the lesson in this story is even more relevant and actionable.
A lesson about goal-setting
You set a goal. You may give some thought as to why you want to achieve it. Next, you outline the necessary steps you will need to climb to reach your goal. If you are really on top of it, you will set deadlines for yourself to keep you on track each step of the way.
At times, you achieve your goal. Congratulations!
Other times, the going gets tough, life happens, and your goal goes out the window.
What if there is another way to go about it?
The young man in our story says there is one. And you can be damn good at it.
You can be a skillful arrow shooter.
Or you can be a talented artist who draws perfect circles.
You can set a goal, pull your arms back, adjust your eyesight on the target, and shoot amid the busyness and unpredictability of your life.
Sometimes you will hit, and other times you will miss.
Or you can try to create a life that will support all the things that are important to you. Draw perfect circles, and create an environment that will allow you to place that arrow in the center every time.
If you want to spend quality time with your family and the TV is blasting, you are holding your phone with notifications blaring every second while you fix yourself some late lunch, this is like shooting an arrow.
On the other hand, if you turn off the TV, put your phone away, and prepare a meal together with your family and y’all sit down to eat, you are drawing the most perfect circle around your arrow right on the bull’s eye.
That’s a wrap
The other side of goal-setting is creating a life that will allow you to reach your goals, with more ease and more success.
Flip the coin of goal-setting in every area of your life and let me know how it goes.
Here’s to perfect circles around our centermost arrow.
The only thing is there is no perfect.
Keep mastering the art of drawing circles, and you will create the life of your dreams.
