Blowing My Way to the Top by Jen Atkin

Author:Jen Atkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Wave
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

GOALS SHOULD ENRICH YOUR LIFE, NOT LIMIT IT

I have no intention of telling anyone what their goals should be—the most beautiful journeys are the unexpected ones that people create for themselves—but I wholeheartedly believe that whatever your dreams, they should be about expanding who you are rather than fitting into someone else’s vision of who you should be. Trying to better yourself is one thing, but if you’re fixated on getting richer or more popular or skinnier, you’re in dangerous territory. We live in a world where everyone wants validation; everyone wants to be envied or admired. But there’s a happy medium between being a role model and getting caught up in a superficial, image-conscious existence.

When you sit down to think about your intentions for the coming week/month/year/decade, give yourself a minute to take stock of what’s driving you. Do you feel a deep sense of yearning, as if achieving your goal will help you finally become the person you were meant to be? Do you crave the feeling of independence and self-sufficiency, the way I did when I was in hair school and I was just dying to get on the salon floor and prove my skills? Or are your goals focused more on attaining things that may not actually matter much to you, but you think should matter to you because everyone else seems to have them? This latter drive is a real recipe for disaster—when your priorities are based on keeping up with the Joneses, nothing will ever be enough. The minute you hit one goal, you’ll find somewhere else you fall short. If you’re focused on having the same body as your friends, once you get there you’ll wish you had their clothes or car. If all you care about is more social media followers, as soon as you hit 100,000 you’ll wonder why you don’t have more partnership offers. Ever heard the expression “do what you love and the money will follow”? I absolutely subscribe to that. Focusing on what you don’t have—or what other people do have—is a trap that is guaranteed to keep you down, and the purpose of goal-setting is to help you rise up.

Just as your goals shouldn’t limit your happiness, I often caution my assistants that they shouldn’t let their goals get too far ahead of the opportunities in front of them, either. What I mean by that is, don’t let some far-off ambition distract from the amazing possibilities before you right now. I’ve seen so many artists who’ve had their minds set on styling a particular celebrity client, for example, when in reality the chance of actually working with that person was really slim. Their focus—or even obsession—with working with that person at some point became a distraction, and they never truly appreciated the amazing place they’d gotten to or the amazing clients they did have in the moment. Their ambition became counterproductive, and of course that can happen to anyone, in any field. Maybe you’re launching a business

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