When the Need for Excitement Sabotages Long Term Goals
The need for some excitement is not bad in itself. However if you’re not careful, needing excitement too often can put a glass ceiling on your goal pursuit efforts. To put it differently, needing excitement too often essentially represents you self-sabotaging your own success.
Why? Because of one simple fact about pursuing goals that people who crave excitement often fail to accept. Achieving any long term goal requires a routine. Furthermore, you can’t compromise on this routine for the sake of excitement unless you also compromise on the goal.
As a result, those who master the art of boring are also most capable of achieving long term goals. This is not necessarily easy, especially for those who have an innate personality type that needs excitement. Unquestionably, routines are a happy place for life’s simplicity for some personality types, and a necessary evil for other personality types.
Those in the former category embrace routines with no effort. But if you’re in this latter category, then it’s likely that several days (or weeks or months) of following the same routine is a painful process. So the fewer routines you must follow to achieve success the better.
Therefore, the best thing one can do once they become aware of this personality trait is manage both goals and routines with intention. This means first and foremost avoiding goals that are not true areas of passion. Secondly, be intentional about tracking and measuring routines so progress is clearly evident and can be used as a tool for motivation instead of excitement.