Existential Psychology

Stubborn About Goals Flexible About Methods

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A stumbling block that can keep people from reaching their goals is that they don’t to take a step back to see that it’s possible to have an unwavering attitude while being open to changing strategies. A quote I saw on pinterest that encapsulates this idea is to be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.

The fact is that when you are just starting out, you might have a belief about the necessary steps but there’s no way to know for sure because you can’t know what you don’t yet know. If you apply that same stubbornness about reaching your end to the actual process of reaching that end you might paradoxically never get where you want to go because you’ll keep heading down a dead end where you should have changed direction long before.

This idea is not hypothetical. If you talk to most successful people they’ll tell you they had to tweak their methods many times along the way in order to adjust to actual conditions rather than the conditions they were expecting. That stubbornness about the final end, what we might call tenacity, is an essential ingredient to keep going when times get tough, but it’s got to occur along with a willingness to adapt or instead of helping your reach your dreams your stubbornness will probably keep you from them.

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